


Beyond This Place

by reapertownusa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-30
Updated: 2012-06-30
Packaged: 2017-11-08 21:07:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 58,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/447582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reapertownusa/pseuds/reapertownusa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dean is inflicted with a deadly curse, the boys make their last stand in an abandoned farmhouse littered with fragments of the past. As his body fails and his personal demons are brought to the forefront, Dean finds himself, his brother and his family again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Major character death, disturbing imagery, torture, references to past non-con in hell, implied past child abuse, themes of alcohol abuse, terminal illness, self-harm and suicide, general violence and sexual content.
> 
> Author's Note: Nearly all the characters here are dead, dying or hallucinations – the boys included. This story is canon through ‘The Born Again Identity’ then goes AU after that point. As a whole, the story is gen, but includes brief Dean/Lisa in flashbacks/hallucinations and vague references to past Alastair/Dean and Sam/Lucifer/Michael non-con.
> 
> This was written for spn_j2_bigbang my fantastic artist was the incredible redrum669. Head on over to http://redrum669.livejournal.com/14401.html to check out the luscious hurt!Dean pretty.

The floor was slick beneath Dean’s boots. The air was heavy with blood and scattered innards coated the cracked, polished cement.

As far as clean-ups went, this one left plenty to be desired. He’d been too slow coming to and the authorities had made record time. At least he’d diced enough to leave only an unrecognizable mass of bits even if the fire was extinguished before it finished its job.

Gas fumes burned his nostrils. He flicked the flame, tossed his last match into the pool of gore and gasoline that he’d drained from the delivery truck parked out back. Somehow he’d forgotten to refuel his gas can. Again.

The blue flames roared up, following a predictable pattern through the dark.

At ten, Dean had stood by his father, looking six feet down into a splintered open casket, and watched the flames rear up before the lighter hit the white burial gown. That night, he had smelled burning flesh for the second time in his life.

His hand had gripped the leather of Dad’s jacket. He’d looked up at the steel-faced man who hadn’t even seen him and sworn he’d be like him one day. For better or worse, it was one more thing he’d failed at. One more broken promise.

He squinted against the pulsating emergency vehicle lights. The flares of red and blue pushed past the old warehouse’s back doorway to cut through the darkness Dean’s eyes had grown accustomed to.

It had been a game when they were kids. He and Sam would wander around in the dark, both pretending they could see to prove to the other that they had the best raccoon eyes around. Sammy hadn’t known that Dean hated raccoons and that it hadn’t been a game. They’d been training from day one.

Even when Dean looked away, he could still see the flashing lights seared over his retinas, dancing like ghosts in the blackness. The phantom lights made his perception all the more unsteady. He narrowed his focus to putting one foot in front of the other.

The rising heat ushered him instinctively back through the warehouse door. The final rusty nail of the last hinge fell away when his shoulder brushed against it. The same shoulder he’d nearly thrown out breaking the door in. He nursed his throbbing arm before moving back to check his pistol, nestled safely in his waistband, the comfort of cold steel.

When he turned the corner, his clunky footsteps were made silent by the renewed howl of sirens, excited gasps of the shocked crowd and shouts from the disoriented authorities. He didn’t run even though every instinct screamed to. It would only make him standout so instead he walked with a forced casualness, melting into the gathered crowd of gawkers.

This was the most excitement these people would ever see in between watching Dick Roman propaganda and waiting in line for their Biggerson’s Turducken Slammers.

Most of them were just humans. He tried to remind himself of that each time one stepped too close, each time one looked towards him a millisecond too long. It was becoming impossible to see people and not just containers for black eyes and ooze.

Dean’s steps abruptly stilled despite the urge to run and fight an invisible enemy. Lost in the crowd on the darkened street, he watched three children being reunited with their families under the watchful stare of the local news station cameras.

A dozen people who had been two minutes away from becoming deep-fried blood sacrifices had walked away with nothing more than a few bruises and a lifetime of nightmares no therapist could talk them out of. In time, they’d talk themselves out of it. They would tell themselves they’d imagined it all. The glowing eyes had been a trick of the light. The ritual they’d seen, the things they’d heard had just been the fabrication of an adrenaline-soaked panic attack. At least he hoped most of them would.

Dean ran his tongue over his bloody lips as he watched one of the fathers scoop his son into his arms, holding him tight like he’d never let go. Like it would be okay. He remembered when his father had made that promise. And when Dad had forgotten it.

Dean looked away, scanning the crowd as he moved toward the fringes. Not in relief, but on edge. His hand remained beneath his jacket and on his weapon, ready for battle. It wasn’t just the adrenaline still coursing through his veins.

This was the new normal.

He used to be able to come down. Fight the monster, save the girl and enjoy the fruits of a job well done. But now the job was never done. There was always one more sorry son of a bitch waiting in the shadows to take their turn.

Now it was Dean’s turn to haul ass while the cameras were focused on the reunion, burning warehouse and police officers giving crap explanations for things they could never understand. It gave Dean time to find his way out through the shadows. The few people he had to squeeze past didn’t give him a second glance. The couple who did steered clear.

Past the strangers, Dean dropped the act, his stiff stride dissolved into a limp. He stopped beside the car, drew in a breath. A sensation of eyes on his back and he pulled his gun, spinning so fast on his heels he nearly toppled.

“Sam! You stupid son of a bitch.” Dean slammed his fist against the dented sheet metal of the Nova’s hood. “Make some damn noise, will you? I nearly blew you a new one.”

Dean quickly used the cuff of his jacket to swipe away the blood that had been running down to sting his eyes. He only managed to trash his last half decent jacket and smear the blood over his face.

“Damn it.”

“Let me take a look,” Sam said.

“No.”

He threw open the door to the car he hadn’t bothered to lock even in this seedy part of town. If someone wanted the junker, they could have it. It wasn’t his anyway. Dean slumped into the seat and pretended he couldn’t feel Sam’s eyes drilling into him. He bit down on his already stinging lip and pretended it hurt more than what they didn’t have.

He punched the gas and headed for the city limits, determined to drive as long as he had the strength to hold down the pedal.

~~~

Dean stood with his arms crossed defiantly over his chest, leaning back against a car for support. They were standing in a mostly empty parking lot barely five miles from where they had started. Mist fell down around them, turning heavier towards rain.

Dean adjusted the weight of the bag over his shoulder. One of the bags he’d already given up on and let hit the ground.

“Just for tonight, Dean.”

Dean gave a distrustful look towards the hourly rate motel and shook his head. “It’s one night too long. We still don’t know if we put ourselves on the radar with that last stunt.”

“Did anyone see you?” Sam asked.

“Well, yeah. There was a whole damn crowd of people and all twelve survivors.”

Sam raised a skeptical brow. “And you think one of them was a leviathan?”

“No...I don’t know.” Dean rubbed his aching head. Sam was asking him to think when he could barely remember his own name. “That’s the whole thing. We can’t know. Staying here’s too risky. This is just the kind of crap joint they’d look for us in.”

“Dean, you can stay here or you can stay at the Hilton. Or you can check into the hospital like you should’ve from the start.”

“Do you want to be on their menu?” Dean asked. “We don’t need a room. We just need a car.” 

“You crashed the car, Dean!”

Dean shrugged. “It’s not like it was some great loss.”

“You could’ve killed yourself!”

“Oh, just shut it. It’s not like I was aiming for the fucking telephone pole.” He rolled his eyes at Sam’s look, a maneuver that renewed the throbbing in his skull. “Fine.”

Dean used his whiskey-soaked black bandana to once more wipe the blood from his face before dropping the other bag at Sam’s feet and turning away.

“Dean...”

“I said fine!” Dean snapped. “Just watch the bags while I get us a room.”

When Dean walked into the darkened office he’d expected to interrupt a slob of a guy reaching a happy crescendo in the middle of his porn viewing. Instead, he froze in the doorway when he saw the worried eyes of a girl who was perched on a stool behind the counter.

She was looking up from a couple of open textbooks and notes strewn over the desk. There was no way she should be working in this junk place alone at this hour. Dean’s protective streak won over his buzzed frustration and throbbing head.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he said. His voice was gentle like he was talking to a cornered stray dog.

The girl stayed leaning over the desk, idly chewing on the end of her pen. “It’s not me I’m worried about, handsome.”

Dean’s shoulders tightened. He’d heard those words far too many times before someone had come up behind him with a dagger. But she wasn’t moving, and a quick scan of the perimeter convinced him they were alone.

“You need to use the phone?” she asked.

Dean realized her eyes were filled with pity and concern for him, not fear for herself. He bristled, holding himself higher.

“We just need a room for the night.”

“I’m sure you clean up pretty, but there’s no we.” She pursed her lips and tapped the pen anxiously against her textbook. “I can tell you need a place to sleep and it’s not like I’m paid on commission, but I can’t...”

Dean growled beneath his breath. He wasn’t a damn charity case. He dug a wad of cash from his pocket and tossed it on the desk. He didn’t know how much it was, just that it was at least enough to cover the room and that his eyesight was too blurry to count it.

“It’s for me and my brother. Two queens. Keep the change,” he said. “Now can I have a key?”

The girl leaned to the side to glance past him and out at the parking lot. She gave him a skeptical look before snatching a key from behind the desk.

“Sure thing.” She dangled the key in front of him, but pulled it back when he reached for it. “But wherever he’s hiding, you tell that brother of yours to keep an eye on you. I have to clean the rooms tomorrow morning and there is so enough ick around here without me having to scrape your gorgeous corpse off the floor.”

Despite her tough words, there was enough worry in her voice to show she was still far more concerned than she should be. He brought his hand up to his head and realized his brow was bloody again.

“Thanks, but I’m fine.”

“Uh huh.” She poked at the wad of cash and pulled a few bills out to slip into the till. The rest she folded around the room key and held out to Dean. “You keep the change and just don’t be dead in the morning, okay?”

Dean was too tired to object and was far past being able to meet her eyes.

He was still looking down when he returned to his brother, who was staring up into the rain. Apparently, Sam thought it was a better idea to stand in the middle of the parking lot and get soaked than walk the ten feet to stand under the awning.

Dean grabbed up the bags and silently led them to their room, wondering just how pathetic he actually looked. He shoved open the door and fumbled for the light switch that he would have been better off not flipping.

The carpet was shag green, the tables a ‘70s disaster and the wallpaper an affront to even his bad taste. The gruesome clash of ugly made his head spin all the more. The heavy scent of nicotine clinging to the curtains didn’t help anything.

Dean dropped the bags with a thud and purposefully avoided his brother’s eyes. He sidestepped Sam and made a bee-line for the bathroom. All he wanted was to disappear into a bottle of whiskey until the bliss of unconsciousness took him. He wasn’t up to putting on a strong face for Sam.

He also didn’t know how long they’d have to rest before the next hit came. They had to take what rest they could get while they could and hope it was enough to get them through the next job.

“I’ll get the med kit,” Sam said.

“I don’t need your mother-henning,” Dean grumbled.

He couldn’t actually focus his eyes well enough to see his own feet. Dean couldn’t even tell how many feet he had or remember how many he should have. More importantly, he didn’t give a crap.

He fumbled in the doorway, tripping over his own worn out boots. He caught himself, both hands on the doorframe then quickly straightened his posture before Sam could see. Sam no doubt had seen anyway. He seemed to see everything these days now that he was footloose and devil free. 

Dean stepped the rest of the way into the bathroom, rolling his bloodshot eyes when he found Sam already standing in there staring at him with a worried gaze. Dean didn’t need this crap right now. The more Sam got involved, the longer it would take for Dean to find that lumpy spot on the mattress that would let him drown out until tomorrow.

“Dude, seriously,” Dean said. “It’s fine.”

It was only a concussion.

Dean reached past his brooding brother to grab a towel off the rack. He turned on the water, not bothering to wait for it to warm. His eyes distantly stared at his bloody knuckles in the mirror, avoiding his own eyes, as he soaked the rag and pressed it to the still bleeding gash on his head.

He winced at the sting, but quickly buried it.

“There. You happy?” Dean asked.

He turned around to face Sam, leaning back against the counter as he stood putting pressure on the wound. He did it to look casual, though he also needed the support as the room spun around him.

As predicted, Sam looked less than convinced. Dean wasn’t so sure that Sam hadn’t rediscovered his psychic abilities. His brother stepped in closer, hard to believe given how close they already were in the one-person bathroom.

“Just let me see,” Sam insisted.

“You seriously got nothing better to do than admire my face?”

He didn’t wait for a reply because he knew he wasn’t going to win this fight. Grudgingly, Dean pulled away the formerly white towel, now stained crimson. He shifted impatiently as he waited to pass his brother’s inspection.

“You need to stitch that up.”

Dean gave a huff and threw the bloody towel in the sink with a splat that sent specks of red over the stained porcelain. “Oh, come on. Dude, quit looking at me like that. It’s just a scratch.”

Just one more scar.

“You passed out,” Sam said.

“I fell asleep.”

“With me screaming in your ear? I don’t think so, Dean.”

“The screech of metal woke me up. I couldn’t have been that far out.”

“And that’s supposed to be comforting?” Sam asked. “Even if you don’t have a brain injury, you still need that gash cleaned up. If it gets infected—”

“After every cut I’ve gotten, you really think this is the one that’s gonna go gangrene? If this stupid little cut does me in it’s just time to go.”

Sam’s face went from worried to scornfully disapproving before again settling on suffocating concern. “Is that what you think? That’s why you can’t take care of yourself? Because if something kills you it’s fate?”

“We killed Fate, remember?” Dean replied as he scooted past Sam and out of the cramped bathroom. “It’s not that I don’t care. I just...fuck it.” Dean dug Bobby’s flask from his jacket. “Think what you want.”

Dean flopped down onto the bed as he fumbled with unscrewing the cap. He was half sure his brother had super glued it shut until it finally came loose. He cursed beneath his breath as the cap slipped from his uncoordinated fingers and landed on the floor, which was way too damn far away.

“You know I don’t want to fight,” Sam replied from the end of the bed where he stood with his arms crossed and gaze unwaveringly locked on Dean.

“Yeah, you’re just worried. You’ve mentioned that once or twice. I get it, I do. But I’m really okay.”

Dean ended the conversation with a deep chug from the flask. He managed to pull his feet up onto the bed before he collapsed back. He grimaced as his head hit the fake down pillow too hard. One inhale of lingering cheap laundry detergent and his eyes fell closed. 

Part of him acknowledged the feel of the flask slipping from his slack fingers. The call of release was too strong to trigger his reflexes.

He was out before the flask hit the floor.

~~~

Crass ringing broke through Dean’s sleep. He groaned, half tempted to just pull the pillow over his ears, but heaving his phone into the wall sounded so much more satisfying.

Barely anyone alive had his number and the only person he cared about was in the bed beside his. Or at least he assumed Sam was.

Answering the phone seemed like less work than prying open his eyes to verify that Sam was where he should be. His eyes remained closed as he dug the ringing phone from his pocket.

It was harder than it should have been because somehow he’d ended up beneath the covers, the blanket tucked carefully around him. He should be covered in sweat, still dressed and swaddled in a comforter, but he wasn’t. 

He had to be getting sick. Dean was chilled to the bone half the damn time and obviously not hiding it as well as he thought. Sam must have covered him after he’d passed out last night. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

He still lay on his aching back as he set the phone to his ear, only briefly glancing at the blurry caller ID that he couldn’t honestly read anyway. He’d only seen enough to know it wasn’t Sam.

At this point, it was probably the leviathans calling up to ask him to be part of their next merger. He half hoped it was Dick because he had a thing or two to say to that suit wearing bag of slime.

“People better be dying,” Dean said.

“Eight so far outside of Louisville. Figured it was enough to get a man out of bed for.”

Dean’s eyes fluttered open, finally making a real attempt to focus. He stiffly sat up on the bed just enough to lean back against the headboard. He shook his head and pretended it would do something to clear the cobwebs, but it only renewed the thundering pain in his skull. He squeezed his eyes shut again and gingerly leaned his head back.

“Yeah, sure,” Dean said. His brow scrunched. “Who is this?”

The voice sounded vaguely familiar with a distinctive drawl, but right now no bells were ringing. Of course, right now, Dean would be lucky to recognize his own voice. The only reason he was still talking was because the guy sounded friendly enough and that was an unusual thing these days.

“Mackey,” the man replied. “Rang you up about that healer Emanuel a few back.”

Dean was about to say he didn’t know anyone named Emanuel until Castiel’s face popped into his head. His grip on the phone tightened.

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

“Things go all right there?” Mackey asked.

Things could’ve gone better, but they also could have gone a hell of a lot worse. He’d gotten Sam back and that was all that really mattered. At least it was more than he’d dared to hope for. Dean more than owed Mackey.

He rubbed his eyes and scratched at his itchy brow. When he did, his rough fingers brushed over a carefully taped bandage. He opened his eyes to look at Sam, who he knew would be standing at the end of the bed.

Dean sighed and shifted to sit more upright. As he repositioned, the covers pulled over his feet. He wiggled his toes to realize his feet were nestled in a clean pair of socks and his boots somehow removed from his blistered feet. Sam looked innocent as Dean glared at him.

“Can’t complain,” Dean said when he remembered he was on the phone. “So this thing in Kentucky?”

“Right. I’m usually the solo type. Fewer connections the better these days.”

“I hear you,” Dean agreed.

“But once this many bodies start dropping even I gotta start putting calls out. Usually I’d put a call in with Bobby, but...”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Yeah, well, no one’s really stepped up to take his place in organizing folks, so I started looking through my call list and your name popped up. I’ve been hearing word of you. You’ve been taking out some serious targets so I figured I might as well run this one by you.”

“We do what we can. Shoot.”

“As near as I can tell, we got some kind of old world witch doctor in these parts. People are dropping hard and ugly and the magic is black as tar. I’ve already taken a shot at this thing and am afraid a second is gonna send it running. If you’re in this part of the world, I could surely use a hand.”

Dean closed his eyes at the thought of another hunt, but hell, it wasn’t like they had anything better to do. As long as he could get his feet under him he was going to be out there taking down every evil son of a bitch he could.

“We’re in. I’m leaving Arkansas now. Just kick back with a cold one and we’ll be on for tonight.”

“Appreciate it.”

The line went dead and Dean closed his phone. He tossed it aside and stifled a groan. Sam cleared his throat. Dean caught sight of his flask sitting beside the alarm clock and popped it open. It was dry.

Dean shot Sam a glare. “You couldn’t bother to refill it?”

“You’ve had enough.”

“I haven’t had any,” Dean complained. “And what are you now, my AA sponsor? I don’t need a liver that’s gonna outlive me.” It was Sam’s turn to glare. Dean just shook his head, more careful this time. “Well, I don’t. If you didn’t want me drinking this, you shoulda bought me a coffee.”

“I plan to,” Sam said. “Just as soon as you tell me what’s going on.”

“Some witch is ganking folks in Louisville.”

“And?”

Dean raised his brow at Sam. “And…it’s a hunt.”

“You hate witches.”

“I also hate Yanni, but you still make me listen to that crap.”

“I do not.”

“Whatever. People are dying, Sam. It’s what we do — save people. Remember?”

“I remember I had to stitch up my unconscious brother after he saved a dozen people last night. You need to sit this one out.”

“Why?”

“Because you look like hell.”

“Me?” Dean asked. “You’re the one that looks like you got one foot in the grave. How long has it been since you’ve even seen the sun?”

Sam grew quiet, turning away. Dean sat all the way up on the bed, throwing his legs over the side.

“Look, we’re both overdue for a break,” Dean said. “But you know how this gig works. We don’t get to decide when we want to play ball.”

“Dean, if you keep going like this it’s gonna kill you.”

Dean was caught off guard by the desperation in his brother’s voice. If anything, Dean had been proving he was impossible to kill, not that he was teetering on death’s door.

“Dude, no one around here’s dying,” Dean said. “I’m good to go.”

He stood up to prove it. It took some serious straining of aching muscles, but he managed to look half all right doing it. God knew he had years of practice pretending. Sometimes it seemed like that was all they ever did.

When Sam looked unconvinced, Dean gave a stiff shrug. “Let’s face it, we’re both way past burnt out, but I ain’t waiting around for my AARP card.”

Dean headed into the bathroom. Sam hadn’t only cleaned him up, but also the bloody mess he’d left in here last night. The place looked spotless. Even with Lucifer silent, Dean wasn’t sure how much sleep Sam was getting. Not that he was one to be talking.

He managed to find the zipper to his fly, which at least meant his coordination wasn’t totally shot. His head was still ringing, his eyes felt like they were going to burst out of his skull, but it was typical hung over, exhausted crap, not anymore of a brain injury than he’d had before. At least he’d live long enough to make it to Kentucky.

“Aren’t you getting tired of all this?” Sam asked from the doorway.

Dean looked over his shoulder. “Of you watching me take a piss or saving lives?”

“Of fighting everything and anything and no one even noticing. Do you even know why you’re doing this anymore?”

“‘Cause it’s the one thing I can do,” Dean said. “And the only thing I hate more than witches is sitting around on my ass.”

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d honestly sat around, and he wasn’t planning on giving it a try. He needed to keep busy, needed to avoid any time that could be spent thinking.

Sam didn’t answer. Dean knew his brother wasn’t cool with this constant hunting. They both knew it was a smokescreen to bury all this other crap, but Sam also knew Dean needed it. This run of random hunts had been Sam’s idea to begin with.

Hanging out with girls at bars and all the stuff that used to float Dean’s boat just didn’t do it for him anymore. Flirting was too much work and even when he did bother to do it, he ended up spending most their time together wondering when her eyes would turn black or the teeth would come out. Fathering a patricidal monster and watching his brother kill her hadn’t exactly helped anything.

Their lives had slowly been whittled away until hunting was all they had left. It was as good as anything. Sooner or later, Sam would get that.

Dean scrubbed his hands beneath the water, the soap stinging the small cuts over his knuckles and fingers. He splashed water over the part of his face Sam hadn’t bandaged up.

“As long as I can still hold a gun, I plan on using it.” Dean grabbed a towel to dry his hands and tossed it in the tub before waggling a brow at his sullen brother. “You in?”

Sam shook his head, giving a weary eye roll. But it wasn’t resignation, it was only acceptance and that was all Dean could ask for.

“You’re stuck with me, Dean.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Dean cracked a smile that tugged at the healing split on his lip. When Sam returned the smile, Dean’s turned genuine.

He plopped back down onto the bed and grabbed his boots. Once he remembered how to tie them, he slapped his thigh and popped back up, using most of his remaining energy to do it.

“What are we waiting for? Let’s hit the road already. Once we grab a new car, anyway.”

“Already did,” Sam said. “There’s a Camaro waiting outside.”

“That’s my boy,” Dean chuckled as he slapped Sam’s shoulder. “I promise I won’t even crash this one. At least not accidentally.”

He shoved the flask into his jacket pocket, juggling the bag into his other hand as he bent down to heave the weapons bag over his aching shoulder. He gave the room a once over before fumbling with the door and heading out.

The morning air was still and cool. Dean took a deep breath, taking in the sunrise before this parking lot became just one more place in their rearview mirror.

He tried to drop the duffel on the back hood, but the thing was far more sloped than a respectable trunk should be and the bag hit the ground. Dean cursed as he nearly dropped the weapons bag in his attempt to catch the duffel.

“Awesome start,” Dean grumbled beneath his breath.

“Hey, let me help you there.”

Dean jerked his head up. A woman he hadn’t noticed approached from a car she was loading.

“Thanks, but I’m good.” Dean hustled to open the trunk and cram in the weapons bag in before she could catch a glimpse of what was inside. “Seriously, I got it.”

Dean calculated how fast he could get his machete out of the bag as the woman continued to approach undeterred. He waited for a fight that didn’t come. All she did was pick up his bag for him and that just pissed him off all the more.

He wasn’t the one people should be taking care of. It was time to really look in the mirror if the damsels in distress felt the need to help him.

When he went to take the bag from her, he hesitated, seeing something familiar in her face. She smiled shyly, fussing with the seam on her blouse before looking up at him. There was a large bruise over her cheek, small cuts on her hands.

“Thank you,” she said.

Dean’s face wrinkled in confusion before he saw the apprehension in her eyes. Finally, the familiarity sunk in. “You were at the warehouse, weren’t you? You okay?”

“Thanks to you,” she said. “I-I don’t even...I don’t know what happened, but I know it wasn’t the serial killer arsonist the police said. I know what you did.”

Dean rubbed the back of his neck. “Don’t worry about it. You just take care of yourself.”

He closed the trunk, but she didn’t take the hint. She just stood there looking over his bandages. “That thing really went after you. Have you been to a doctor? If you need someone to drive you...”

“Thanks, but we’re good.”

She looked unconvinced, but stepped away. Dean gave her the best smile he could summon before climbing into the driver's seat. He slammed the door shut, staring straight ahead.

“What the hell was that?” Dean asked. He looked into the rearview mirror, studying his tired, sunken eyes and running his fingers over the thick stubble of his cheeks that was verging on an actual beard. “Do I really look that bad?” His eyes shifted to his brother. “Do you?”

Sam made a face that was far too complex for Dean to decipher this early in the morning.

“Sam?”

“She just wanted to thank you,” Sam replied in a tone that was far from convincing, but which gave Dean an out. “And I think she liked you.”

Dean scoffed. He might not be buying his brother’s answer, but he knew one thing for sure. His eyes caught Sam’s and he jutted his thumb in the woman’s direction. 

“You asked why. That’s why we do it. Because her family isn’t spending today planning a funeral.”

“You did a good thing, Dean.”

“Yeah, we did. Now let’s go burn a witch.”

He waited for the woman to step back into her motel room long enough for him to ignite the wires to start the car.

“Let’s just get you some breakfast first,” Sam said.

“I’m good.” Dean pulled the car out of the lot, resisting the urge to just pump the gas and get the hell out of Dodge. “I wanna make Kentucky before nightfall.”

“Food and then we hit the highway.”

“When did you turn into such a mother hen?” Dean asked.

“When you forgot how to take care of yourself.”

“I take care of myself. I’m still breathing, aren’t I? In our line of work, that’s saying something. Besides, the caretaking gig is my job.”

“Was,” Sam corrected. “Now it’s my turn.”

“Like I’m suddenly gonna stop watching out for you? Face it, you need to get your own hobby.”

Dean gunned the engine and fired up the music. He just wanted to get moving and lose himself in the open road. 

What he really wanted was his fingers back around the wheel of the Impala. The sound of this Camaro was all wrong. It was too small, the engine was out of tune and he couldn’t speak its language to know if the next clunk would be its last.

With all the shit going on day after day, the Impala was the one thing he could claim as his own. It was the one familiarity in an ever-changing line of junk motel rooms and filthy diners. It was a piece of Dad, of Mom, of the family they’d used to have.

It was home.

And now it was buried under a mountain of crap in a cold, musty storage unit hidden in the ass end of the universe. It would be one thing if it was just for now, just until they could fix this craptastic mess of a planet, but days had turned to months and things had gone from bad to worse.

He wanted to dig out his baby and just drive. Screw the leviathans and everyone else who wanted to track them. Just let the bastards come.

But part of him could still see those families who would get at least one more day together and he knew what he wanted didn’t matter, hadn’t for a long time. As long as he still had Sam at his side, it was worth pushing on to the next hunt.

Dean just wished he could remember what he was running from.


	2. Chapter 2

Gravel crunched beneath the tires as Dean slowed the car on the dead-end road. The sun was setting beyond the trees. There was still enough light in the scarlet sky to see, but it did little to soothe his anxiety as Dean scanned the secluded area, identifying his blind spots. 

He did manage to crack a smile at the ’86 Wagoneer parked at the end of the road. The over-sized Jeep with exterior wood paneling wasn’t Dean’s idea of a prize ride, but it handled all right off road and he knew for a fact it had plenty of room in all the right places. 

Sam shifted in the seat beside him. “What’s so funny?” 

“Nothing,” Dean said, wiping the smirk from his lips.

“It’s something. Come on, I haven’t seen you smile since….” 

Sam’s voice trailed off and he looked back out the window. Dean didn’t know what Sam had planned to say, but only because there were so many things he could’ve said. 

It could’ve been since they’d abandoned Cas in a mental ward or since the angel had found God in himself and fucked over the world. Maybe since they’d lost Bobby, since Sam’s wall had broken or Lucifer had first been sprung from his cage. Maybe since Dad or the demon blood. Hell, sometimes it felt as if it hadn’t been since Mom. 

They were long out of reasons to smile. The only thing keeping Dean here and fighting was Sam. The only thing beside Sam that could still stir a smile were memories of the past. 

It was those memories, the ones that lived far enough back that he’d had time to sugar coat them. They were things that may or may not have meant anything to him at the time, but were now all he had to convince himself it hadn’t been all bad. 

Any way he looked at it, the things he’d done in a Wagoneer were far from bad. 

“Had my first threesome in the back of one of those things,” Dean said. “Might have been a foursome...the drive-in projector broke halfway through the movie and it was so damn dark-”

“Ugh. Forget I asked.” Sam scrunched his face and returned to staring out the windshield, trying and failing to hide his amusement. A moment later, he tipped his head towards Dean. “Didn’t Caleb used to have one of those things?”

“Yeah.”

“And didn’t he let you drive it while Dad was out of town?” 

Dean shrugged innocently. “Might’ve.” 

“Seriously, Dean? Caleb’s car?”

Dean leaned back in the seat and checked his gun before again sliding it securely beneath his jacket. “We both did it in Dad’s car. Why the hell wouldn’t I have used Caleb’s?”

“Human decency? And no,” Sam corrected. “We didn’t both…I can’t believe I used to sleep in the back of the Impala without sanitizing it first.”

“Whatever, dude. Like you didn’t know. Hey,” Dean nudged his brother and nodded towards the other car. “We got movement.”

A man in faded jeans with his hands stuffed in his pockets came around the side of the Wagoneer. A casual observer would’ve read the body language as relaxed, but Dean could see the edge to the man’s movements and could guess what weapons the guy was packing underneath that old, cotton-lined denim jacket.

Dean glanced at Sam and nodded. He opened the car door and stepped out, but didn’t approach. 

“Mackey?” 

The guy pulled his hands from his pockets to cross his arms over his chest, leaning back against his car. The man’s face hadn’t seen a razor in longer than Dean’s and probably looked a lot older than it was. There was little doubt the man was a hunter. 

“Sure as the day is long,” Mackey replied.

He moved towards them, meeting them halfway between the cars. Dean watched warily as the man reached into his jacket. His own hand slipped beneath his jacket until Mackey revealed a flask, not a weapon. 

“I’ll drink yours, if you’ll drink mine.”

Dean closed the last of the distance between them and accepted the flask. He unscrewed the cap and knocked it back. The holy water was bland on his tongue. It had been a long time since he’d drank anything that was less than five percent alcohol. 

He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket and handed back the flask. “I’m good.” 

It wasn’t likely that a demon would request holy water. Besides, with all the chompers around, the stuff wasn’t worth as much as it used to be. Dean shook his head at the thought. 

If someone had told him that one day demons would be the least of their problems, he’d never have believed them. He remembered when he’d thought demons were too big and then it was the angels. Now there was primordial black ooze everywhere and he wasn’t even sure it mattered any more. 

Dean looked up when he realized Mackey was looking him over. “We good?”

“Fine,” Mackey said. “You okay there?”

“Am I...? For fuck’s sake. Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

Mackey shrugged. “Seen fresher corpses is all.”

Dean shot a glare at Sam when his brother snorted an agreement. 

“Maybe you should listen to him,” Sam said. “I told you...”

“Shut up.” 

Mackey raised his hands. “Okay by me. I know the gig. Job hollows you out, but keeps you going.”

“So let’s get going,” Dean said.

Mackey turned back towards his car and waved for them to follow. He reached in through the open window to snatch a file folder off the seat. 

From the glimpse Dean got of the interior, it was surprisingly clean inside. He made sure Sam couldn’t get close enough to look or his brother would use it as proof that Dean was the biggest slob of a hunter in existence. It wasn’t Dean’s fault he had better things to do than vacuum stolen cars. 

“Here are the vics,” Mackey said as he flipped open the folder. “Hardware store manager, cheerleader, retired fisherman…. You get the idea. If there’s a pattern it’s over my head.”

Dean took the folder and held it for Sam to see as he flipped through the pages. He couldn’t argue with the fact that none of these people had an obvious connection. 

“How do you know these deaths are even related?” Dean asked.

For all he knew, they weren’t. Not every hunter was as careful with their research as Dad and Bobby had been and some were quick to jump to conclusions. 

Sam leaned further over Dean’s shoulder and tapped the page. “They all died of insect and snake bites.”

“Bug bites?” Dean asked. 

“You got it,” Mackey said. 

“So…what? We’re talking demon cockroaches?”

“Your guess is good as mine. But they ain’t no damn cockroaches I can tell you that much.”

“Turn the page back,” Sam said. 

His voice carried a hint of urgency that said that monster brain of his was on to something. Dean didn’t bother trying to catch up and just did as he was told. 

Sam jabbed the page. “Deathstalker scorpion, black mamba, banana spider….”

Dean stared blankly at his brother. “So?”

“So these creepy crawlies, safe to say none of them are from around these parts,” Mackey replied. 

Dean furrowed his brow, closing the folder with a shrug. “So the van tipped over on the way to the zoo. Don’t mean there’s any mojo behind this.”

Sam looked at him like he was a moron. “Dean, some of those people took weeks to die.”

“Weeks, days,” Dean said. “Dead is dead. How’s the timing make any difference?”

“That’s just it.” Mackey took back the folder and tossed it in through the window. “These here are some of the most poisonous nasties mother earth has got to offer.”

“A banana spider? Really? Can’t say I’m gonna lose sleep worrying about that bad ass son of a bitch.”

“You like your dick?” Mackey asked.

“Excuse you?” Dean narrowed his eyes. The look on Mackey’s face told Dean that he’d heard him right, but also that he didn’t want the full explanation. He grimaced. “Well, yeah...forget I asked.”

“Uh huh. Anyway, the most recent victim got taken out by an Australian blue-ringed octopus. Tiny bastards that’ll kill you quicker than a werewolf on the full moon. Guy should’ve been dead in less than hour. He spent two weeks choking on his own blood.”

“He had an awesome immune system?” Dean said. “Or maybe he didn’t die from the bite…or whatever the hell an octopus does.”

“Oh, he did. All the symptoms fit fine. But the poison isn’t the half of it. This thing is the world’s worst acid trip, from what I’m told. We’re talking full-on hallucinations so real these guys couldn’t tell up from down. It don’t stop tearing from the inside until there’s nothing left then...well, there ain’t nothing left.”

“So it waits until the victims are bags of drool and then the venom finishes them off?”

“Something like that. A time-release toxin, I’d guess, but here’s the thing, I saw one of the bodies in autopsy. This guy had died in the hospital, been dead maybe a couple hours. Inside his body cavity, liquefied organs and some of the nastiest looking maggots I ever did see. It was like these things had eaten straight through the organ walls until there was nothing left but blood soup.”

“Okay,” Dean said. “So definitely our kinda gig. You said you already took a shot at this thing?”

“I did. Found his altar. He’s holed up in a house on the edge of town. Got all these critters in jars and enough black magic in the air to make your hair stand on end. Thought he was just human, so tried a gun. Guy barely flinched, popped the damn bullets straight out. Only saving grace is that I don’t think he saw me.”

“Super. Well, we’ll see what we can do.”

Mackey looked down and cleared his throat. “Truth is…I wasn’t planning on calling you in on this. No offense, but all I’ve heard of you are a bunch of fish stories. I honestly got trouble believing.”

Dean’s shoulders squared, but he tried to let it roll off. Mackey was right. He didn’t know Dean. No one did and that was fine. They’d never fit in even where other hunters were concerned.

It wasn’t like there was some damn plaque proclaiming that the Winchesters had stopped the apocalypse. As far as he knew, the word was only that they’d started it. And they had. It was his mess and he didn’t deserve so much as a pat on the back for having cleaned up his own shit. 

“Fair enough,” Dean said. “Look, man, I honestly don’t give a rat’s ass what you think we did or didn’t do, but you called me, remember?”

“Didn’t have much choice. I overheard some things while I was staking out the place. This guy isn’t working alone. Couldn’t hear much of what they were saying, but I got a name. Winchester.”

Dean did his damnedest to ignore the look on his brother’s face. It had been hard enough to drag Sam’s ass out here. Just because it was a trap didn’t mean they could turn their backs. No one else was dying because of him. 

“Might be nothing, mind you,” Mackey continued. “Didn’t get much in the way of specifics. They just mentioned a Dean Winchester. You’re the only one of them I know. Thought maybe you already knew this guy. Maybe a botched hunt.”

“We don’t botch hunts,” Dean said.

“Happens to the best of us. Sometimes they just get away.”

“Not from us.” Dean’s glare turned hard. “We go in, we do our job and we don’t leave until it’s finished.”

He didn’t expect an ounce of credit for what they did, but he was working way too damn hard to put up with accusations of sloppy work. Maybe it was par for some hunters, but he and Sam had been raised better than that. 

“Hey, no offense. I’m sure you and your crew work wonders. Just reporting the news.”

Sam set his hand on Dean’s shoulder. “Dean...”

Dean shrugged off the touch with an aggravated grunt. His brother remained undeterred and settled his hand again on Dean’s back, forcing Dean to focus. He took a deep breath and scrubbed his hand over his face rather than punching Mackey. 

“Yeah. Right.” Dean forced his clamped jaw to relax. “We worked a bug job over in Oklahoma, but it was some seven years back and just some old Indian curse. I mean, sure we’ve pissed off our fair share of...everything, but...”

“Dean, you know this is a trap,” Sam said.

He glared at his brother. “You think I don’t get that this has trap written all over it?”

“I know how it sounds, but if you’ve met the guy, I don’t see why he’d be fixing to net a random hunter,” Mackey said. “It’s why I didn’t mention it over the phone. I wasn’t sure if you’d split and leave me with this mess. It’s not like I’m trying to toss you to the wolves, pal. I’m just trying to stop bodies from dropping.”

“We’re on the same page,” Dean said as he turned back towards the car. “Like I said, we’ll take care of it.” 

“I finish what I start too.”

“Fine.” Dean forced out an impatient sigh that was meant to calm, but left him itching for a fight. He stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets and clenched his fists as he turned back to Mackey. “You hit the books yet?”

“Done my research, but I don’t usually do exotics. Don’t got much in the way of reading.”

“We got plenty. We’ll see what we can dig up.”

“All right. I got an extra bed over the shop. Might do to get a good meal in you and give you a chance to get cleaned up. Maybe heal up some while we go over the books.”

Dean gritted his teeth. “I’m not gonna hit the road and I don’t need any healing up.”

“Dean, a warm bed is sounding pretty damn good right now,” Sam said.

“I don’t need someone else’s bed,” Dean shot back at Sam.

Mackey gave a dismissive wave. “Suit yourself. So like I said, I know where this guy is and he’s pretty settled in. I don’t think he’s planning on heading for the hills. We can meet back in the morning. You’re not allergic to coffee?” Mackey asked.

“Nah, but I’m buying.”

Dean returned to the car with Sam close on his heels. He threw himself into the seat and waited for Mackey’s car to skid away before starting the engine and pulling out onto the deserted road. 

Darkness had crept up on them. There was only a dusting of light left on the distant horizon and stars were filling the blackening sky. 

Dean didn’t know where he was going. He just went far enough before pulling over onto another dead road that was overgrown enough to feel secluded. He shut off the car and waited for the bitching to commence. 

“You really think you’re better off sleeping in the woods than in a bed?” Sam asked. 

“Yeah, I do. We don’t need anyone watching out for us. It’s only this douchebag of a witch that needs to watch his ass.”

“You’re scared.”

“What the hell, Sam? I swear the next person that starts diagnosing me is walking away bloody.”

Scared wasn’t the word. 

He just wasn’t going to sacrifice anyone else by putting in a connection between him and them. This witch was already gunning for him and might already know that Mackey had taken the shot. He wasn’t going to be the reason Mackey woke up with the world’s nastiest snake bite. 

And sure, maybe the days of him being comfortable sleeping under a stranger’s roof were long gone. They’d grown up scrounging what they needed and relying on charity, but things had been simpler then. They’d had friends. 

His gut was permanently twisted in knots these days, screaming all kinds of bad. Something just out of peripheral was wrong and any damn minute the other shoe was going to drop. 

But he wasn’t scared. He was being cautious, practical. 

He wouldn’t get any rest sitting up in bed wondering if he and Sam were going to wake up with their throats slit. He just couldn’t take anymore. He was barely holding on as it was. At least he knew Sam was Sam and if no one else was here but him, he knew Sam was safe. 

“I get it, Dean.”

“No, you don’t.”

Dean took a hit from his flask and waited for Sam to find something more entertaining to look at. 

“Yes, I do. You think I don’t worry about whether or not I’m going to be able to have your back? If you’re making it out of the next hunt? Dean, I’ve been worried sick about you, about what’s coming next. But Mackey wasn’t wrong. You gotta take care of yourself, man, or it won’t matter what’s coming next because you won’t be here to see it.”

“I’ve been taking care of myself for over twenty-five damn years, Sam. I don’t need you worrying about me.”

“I’ll stop worrying if you will.” 

Sam dug behind the seat then tossed a packet of M&Ms at Dean. With a snort, Dean caught the bag. Somehow holding food kindled a rumble in his stomach when he hadn’t even realized he was hungry.

Dean ripped into the packet before shooting his brother a look. “Bitch.” 

“Jerk.”

He popped a handful of the candy into his mouth, savoring the satisfying crunch of peanuts and the melting of chocolate. He leaned forward again in his seat and caught a look of himself in the mirror. 

It wasn’t as if he was going to admit it, but he’d probably worry about the guy looking back at him if he crossed him on the street. Pushing the thought aside, Dean leaned closer to the mirror and poked at the bandage over his brow. 

“Dude, you better of not shaved my damn eyebrow.”

Sam forced a snicker. Dean could still see the worry heavy on this brother’s face, but he was at least trying to push it aside. 

“Don’t worry,” Sam said. “I just painted it pink.”

“Shut up,” Dean pitched one of the M&Ms at Sam who barely dodged it in the cramped space. 

Dean finished the bag, crumpled it up and tossed it into the back seat. He grabbed a toothbrush out of his duffel, kicked open the door and turned in his seat so he was leaning out. He squeezed toothpaste from the nearly empty caked up tube.

He poured some of the liquid from his flask over the dirty bristles before raising his brow to Sam. “See, I’m taking care of myself,”

“That’s not the holy water.”

“No.” After Dean brushed his teeth, he downed back another shot of the whiskey. “We’re almost out of that stuff and I don’t see a church, but we passed about a dozen convenience stores.”

“Get some sleep, Dean.”

Dean reclined his seat in the too-small car and pretended his legs weren’t going to cramp like hell. He shivered, pulling his jacket tighter around his him. Sam was right, a warm bed did sound good right now. But a lot of things they couldn’t have sounded good. 

They’d grown up making sacrifices, but somehow it always got harder. Maybe they just hadn’t known what they’d been giving up then or maybe they’d thought someday they’d find what they were missing. 

Dean knew better now. They’d had everything they were ever going to. At least they were running out of things to lose.

~~~

Dean stretched his neck to the side. His movements were tentative until he realized he wasn’t as sore as he’d expected. When he moved to sit up, something fell from behind his head. He reached back and pulled up a shirt that had been bundled up as a makeshift pillow. 

He gave a sideways look to his brother who feigned innocence. Dean pushed off the blanket that had been laid over him at some point, balling it up and tossing it into the back with the shirt. 

“Dude, what’s with you and tucking me in?” Dean asked. “It’s getting weird.”

“You were shivering and apparently can’t manage to find your own way beneath the covers.”

“With pick-up lines like that, it’s no wonder you’re gonna die a virgin.”

Dean rubbed the sleep from his eyes and moved his seat upright. He pushed open the door, swinging his stiff legs out. Given how cramped he was he couldn’t figure how Sam could look so comfortable. 

He stood, flexing his jaw and stretching his arms up behind his back until he got a satisfying pop. When he turned around, Sam was standing on the opposite side of the car with some musty old book laid out over the hood. His laptop was open on the front seat. 

“Do we need to have Sheriff Mills swing by Rufus’s cabin to comb through the library there?” Dean asked. 

They carried the most helpful books around with them. It was why the duffel was so damn heavy, but they could only carry so much. 

They didn’t even have one car they were sticking with, let alone one location. Bobby had libraries spread out over the country. It helped for certain stuff, but also meant their resources were scattered.

“No, I think we’re good,” Sam said.

“Don’t tell me you already solved this thing while you should’ve been sleeping.” Dean leaned into the car to dig through his bag before popping his head back out. “Did you even sleep?”

“Of course. And I think I know what we’re dealing with.”

“Do I have to buy a vowel or you gonna tell me?” Dean asked. 

Sam’s gaze had wandered off. He snapped his head back towards Dean like Dean had interrupted his daydream. 

“What?” Sam asked. A moment later, his brain seemed to catch up. “Oh, Gu.”

“Goo?” The flask was halfway to Dean’s lips when he lowered it to the hood of the car. “You’ve been hitting the books all night and that’s the best you could come up with? Slimer did it?”

“Gu or Ku. It’s a Chinese character, the eighteenth hexagram in the I-Ching.”

“Eee what?” Dean asked. He leaned over the hood to look at the book. His brother turned it so that Dean could see the lines and accompanying scribbled symbol that was apparently supposed to mean something. “Even I can draw better than that.”

“It’s a character from an ancient Chinese script they used to carve into bones for divination. This one is supposed to symbolize a bowl of insects.”

“Yummy.” Dean tilted his head to reexamine the squiggles then shrugged. “Okay, I’ll buy that. So we got some old Chinese witch doctor spreading around his bowls of creepy crawlies?”

“Maybe,” Sam said. “There was a cluster of cases like this back in Montana about ten years ago. Bobby didn’t have enough pieces to put the clues back together then, but now—”

“How do you know Bobby worked a case like this?”

“He told me.” Sam pulled the book back across the hood and suddenly closed it. “You know...a while ago when we were researching another case.”

“Huh. Hey, uh speaking of Bobby, have you...?”

Sam shook his head. “No, Dean.”

Dean nodded, his hand gripping Bobby’s old flask before he dropped it into his pocket. 

For a while, he’d been so sure. It wasn’t just all the signs. He would’ve sworn he’d felt Bobby. He’d almost thought he’d even heard him more than a couple times, but lately there’d been nothing but radio silence. 

There was no reason there should be anything else. They’d given Bobby a proper sending off. Dean just couldn’t stop fixating on what Garth had said, that fire didn’t always do the trick even when it was past time to let go and admit that all the signs of Bobby had only been his imagination. 

No matter how much Dean didn’t want to be alone, it was better off that way. Bobby should be at rest, long gone from this crap world. The last thing Dean should be doing is looking in every dark corner for some sign of him. 

Dean had always said Bobby had been like a father to him, but truth was he hadn’t known what to make of Bobby at first. 

When they’d met him, he’d given them this look that Dean never had been able to figure out. It had been awkward enough that Dean had rushed to drag Sammy off to play in the junkyard while Dad and Bobby went over the books. 

Bobby had just seemed cranky and kind of scary. He’d fought with Dad a lot, which had only made Dean more suspicious until he’d first overheard what they were fighting about. 

Dean had never liked anyone arguing with Dad, but he loved anyone who looked out for Sam. Bobby hadn’t been the ass Dean had thought, he’d just been worried about Dad dragging them along for a hunt. 

Despite Dean’s protests, Bobby had won that fight and he and Sam had spent their first night at Bobby’s without Dad. Dean had done his best to give Bobby a wide berth. 

It hadn’t been until Dean had spilled Bobby's flask over a scroll older than the English language, expecting the wrath of hell to come down on him, that Bobby had opened up to become what Dean had forgotten a father could be. 

“Dean,” Sam hissed. “Quit feeling up that flask and pay attention.”

“I’m listening,” Dean said, pretending that he’d even noticed his brother was still rambling off his encyclopedic knowledge of who cares. “The witch lays golden eggs.”

“Jincan, the gold silkworm,” Sam corrected. “It’s another name for the Gu. Mackey was right. This is some seriously black stuff.”

“Gold worms. Unless they’ve been exposed to nuclear radiation and gone all Mothra, I’m pretty sure we can take them. Can we skip to the part on how we gank this sucker?”

“You gotta pay attention. Dean, you’re not—”

“I’m not what, Sam? Strong enough? Don’t got my head in the game?”

“You’re getting more reckless. If that’s even possible. I have to worry about you eating, let alone actually watching your own back.”

“You know what? Enough of this crap.”

Dean shrugged off his jacket and tossed it into the car before peeling off his shirt. He ignored Sam’s stare, not caring if Sam was going to have an aneurysm about the bruises the shirt had been hiding. 

They’d both been getting beat to hell since high school. He wasn’t sure why Sam had decided to go all anti-injury police now. It wasn’t like Sam could seriously look any rosier with the marathon of jobs they’d been working. 

“What are you doing?” Sam asked. 

“Ending this damn pity party.” 

Dean pulled out a razor from his bag and shook the last of the shaving cream to the top of the can. He leaned down so he could see his scruffy face in the car’s side mirror. 

As he started to cover his cheeks, he quirked his brow at Sam. “You gonna get back to the history lesson or what?” 

“How long has it been since you’ve shaved?” 

“Long enough that I look like the Henderson’s family pet,” Dean grumbled. “But I’m done with all the sorry looks from you and every other poor sap I run into. I’m fine and I’m gonna prove it.”

He wiped his face clean, examining his work in the mirror. His cheeks were smooth again, but he still had dirt smeared over his temple and Sam’s overdone bandage job made it look like he’d just had brain surgery. 

Taking the flask of holy water, he splashed just enough water over his face to wipe away the dirt. With less care than he should’ve taken, he pried off the bandage. Beneath it were immaculately sewn stitches that Sam had obviously spent way too much time on. 

“Even if you were fine, it wouldn’t mean you don’t have to be careful. We just need to go in smart,” Sam said.

“I always go in smart,” Dean replied as he wet his last clean bandana. He scrubbed the fabric under his ripe armpits. “Dude, keep staring at me like that and I’m gonna charge you admission.”

“That doesn’t work,” Sam said.

“Oh, don’t start that crap again. Roadside showers totally work.”

“Says the guy who obviously can’t smell himself. All you do is contaminate the deodorant. You never smell better when you’re done.”

“I’ve told you before, that’s you you’re smelling. Me? I’m gonna be smelling like a rose.”

Dean made a show of grabbing out his last fresh t-shirt and patting himself dry. He slathered on the deodorant before pulling on the shirt and sending Sam a smug look. 

“They don’t make deodorant that strong,” Sam said.

“Do you know how to kill these worms or not?” 

“If you’d been listening, you’d know there aren’t any worms involved. At least they’re not what’s really doing the killing.”

“Then why won’t you stop talking about them?” Dean asked. 

“It’s how the Gu poison is made. One venomous creature eats another and another and the magic concentrates the venom.” 

“Then shouldn’t people be dying faster, not slower?” Dean asked.

“This isn’t a physical thing. Gu in the I-Ching…well, it’s about inner turmoil and that’s what this curse creates. It takes everything from the victim’s past, their fears and nightmares, every issue they’ve ever had and throws it back at them. It’s meant to be as slow and painful as possible.” 

“So they relive all their nightmares until they drop. Like ghost sickness?”

Sam gave Dean a sympathetic look that told Dean his expression wasn’t as unreadable as he thought. “Not exactly, but kind of. Just worst.”

“Awesome.” 

“Dean, if this guy gets at you—”

“He won’t.”

Sam set the book back in the car and leaned over the hood, folding his hands. “Victims are eaten from inside and die choking on their own blood.”

“Been there, done that. Got the angel handprint to prove it.” Dean leveled his eyes on Sam. “I don’t know why, but this guy’s killing innocent people to call me out. We’re dealing with this.”

“We can’t.”

“We stopped heaven. We can stop one damn witch.”

Sam leaned down to the laptop. He scrolled down some webpage before quoting, “Even water, fire, weapons or swords can do it no harm.” 

“We’ve killed gods and this thing is…what? Just some souped-up human? I ain’t buying it. If it breathes you can kill it.”

“We don’t even know that it is breathing.”

“Well, my gut says it is, so you know what we’re gonna do?” Dean asked. “We’re gonna find something that works even if I have to chop this bastard into bite-sized pieces and seal him in a hundred different curse boxes. And then, we’re going to lunch and I’m going to eat the biggest damn burger we can find and you’re gonna wonder why you were ever worrying about me. Got it?”

Sam didn’t have a chance to answer before Dean’s cell phone went off. He glanced at the caller ID, and seeing Mackey’s number, flipped open the phone. 

“We’re on our way,” Dean said.

“Actually, that’s what I’m calling about. Need you to meet me at the house I mentioned. Corner of 10th and Ivy. Put in some more calls last night. Got something that should do the job, but I’m gonna need backup.”

“You got it. We’ll be there in fifteen.” Dean snapped his phone closed and smirked at Sam. “What did I tell ya?”

“When you’re done gloating, Dean, do you wanna fill me in?”

“Mackey found something to kill this son of a bitch.”

Sam’s attention wandered off towards the trees before looking back at Dean. “Did he say what?”

“He’ll fill us in when we get there. Just get in the car.”

~~~

After driving around once to locate the address, they parked a few blocks away and walked back to the house. The area looked like any other suburban neighborhood, only nicer. 

It wasn’t a rich area, just quintessential home-town America. The street they walked was lined with mature trees that filtered the warmth of the morning sun. The yards were nicely mowed with flowerbeds in full bloom and inviting houses that had never seen the likes of poltergeists or demons. 

An elderly man meandered out of his home to snatch the morning paper before his coffee kicked in. A very hot and obviously unavailable woman jogged on the opposite side of the street pushing her baby stroller. 

It was almost relaxing until heavy pants came up behind Dean, approaching fast and accompanied by claws skittering over the pavement. 

He jammed his hand into his jacket and shot a wary look over his shoulder, ready to pull his gun until he saw a dog huffing and puffing. It yanked steadily on its leash, wagging its tail to the point it looked like it might take off, dragging a laughing couple behind it. 

Dean stepped out of their way and forced himself to relax. He wiped from his mind, the visual of his own blood being sprayed by hellhound claws. There was no trace of the Pit here. 

Instead, there was just a dog that looked way too damn much like that one Sam had adopted in Flagstaff. He doubted Sam had ever forgiven Dad for making him take the thing to the pound. Dean had never forgiven himself for telling Sam that it would be put down. 

Dean had just been so damn pissed. It had all hurt so much. 

His father had lost faith in him. Dad had gone off on him like he never had before, sober. In retrospect, he knew Dad had just been scared about Sam, but Dean had been scared too. 

He’d simultaneously realized that he wasn’t the everything he’d thought he was for Sam. His little brother had opted for fending for himself in a cabin over letting Dean take care of him. Better yet, the memory had made Sam’s top ten in heaven. 

At least that was what Dean had used to think. 

He finally got that it was all crap. Sam hadn’t been looking for a way to get rid of him. Where they were now, this piece of normal suburban life they were strolling through, this was what Sam had been looking for. 

This was the kind of place Dean had spent the first four years of his life and where Sam should have grown up. Now it felt like a world apart, one he had no right being any part of. 

Nothing that had graced Alastair’s rack belonged anywhere near a place like this. But Sam, he should’ve had his chance at this. 

Dean wasn’t under the delusion that the families within the walls of these houses were living perfect lives. He knew most of them were tired of work and bored out of their skulls half the time. Not long ago, he’d been there himself, living the supposed American dream with a family that he would’ve given anything to actually deserve. 

“You okay, Dean?”

Dean looked up at his brother as they turned the corner onto 10th. There was a lifetime full of apologies on the tip of Dean’s tongue. But there usually were and as usual, he just swallowed them down.

“Fine.”

The house they stopped in front of wasn’t anything like the ones they’d passed. It was set back on a large lot with a driveway so overgrown no one would notice it was there unless they were looking for it. 

“Put the flask away,” Sam whispered.

Dean shot Sam a glare before he fully registered that his fingers were halfway to unscrewing the cap. He hadn’t even realized he’d pulled it out. 

“You’re the one that told me to bring it,” Dean said as he stuffed it back into his jacket.

“Not to...never mind. Where did Mackey say he was meeting us?”

“He didn’t, but he’s here. Saw his car parked one block back. Let’s just get a look at this place.”

Dean didn’t have to look at Sam to know how apprehensive his brother was. He knew this was a trap. That was the story of their lives, but Dean wasn’t laying down his gun to live in a plastic bubble.

He pushed forward through the brush as quietly as possible, cursing beneath his breath when a branch snapped beneath his boot. He’d been trained to move silently and damn well should be doing it, but he was off his game. Not that he was going to admit that to his brother. 

What they saw in the clearing wasn’t so much a house as a deathtrap that should’ve been scheduled for demolition. It was decently sized, but so dilapidated that Dean was as worried about falling through the floorboards once they got inside as he was about facing the witch. 

“Yeah, this place isn’t creepy at all,” Dean muttered.

The bushes behind them rustled. Dean spun around and cocked his pistol, which was loaded with silver-coated iron rounds just because overkill never hurt. He eased his grip on the trigger when Mackey broke through the underbrush to join them. 

Dean lowered the gun, but didn’t holster it. “So what do you got?”

“We need to hand this fellow a taste of his own medicine,” Mackey said. “Only problem is, we gotta get to the medicine. The venom’s all in the basement. I’ve been watching the house. He’s down there too. Figure between the two of us, we can incapacitate him long enough to set his own venom on him.”

“That’s a plan I can live with,” Dean said. “So what you got to incapacitate him?”

Mackey gave a casual shrug that wasn’t remotely comforting, but nudged his jacket aside to reveal the glint of a machete. “Figure it will slow him down good as anything.”

“Because from what he said, bullets worked so well last time,” Sam said.

Dean arched a brow at his brother, who annoyingly enough actually had a point. Everyone always asked them how they were still alive, but the more they worked with other hunters, the more he wondered how any of them were. 

Dad had taught them to go in prepared or not at all. Dean didn’t always follow that rule, but it was always in the back of his mind, especially when Sam was involved. 

Going in guns blazing had its place. This wasn’t it, but sneaking in was always a valid option. They weren’t trying to stop an apocalypse. It was just one witch with some jars of bugs. As long as they could get past the mojo, they’d be fine. For all he knew, Mackey was just a sucky ass shot and had completely missed the first time. 

“I’ll go around back, already scoped the place,” Mackey said. 

“You do that.”

As soon as Mackey took off Dean focused back on the house. While Mackey might have checked the place out, Dean had no clue what they should expect inside. 

“I don’t like this, Dean.”

He felt it too. This place was all kinds of wrong, but it wasn’t like they could just walk away. If they did, any one of those people they’d passed on the way here could be the next one swimming in their own blood. 

“Sammy, you know we gotta take care of this.”

“Yeah, I know, but you don’t have to die doing it.”

“No one but that witch is dying here today. We go in, we do our thing and get out. Simple.”

“When was it ever simple?” Sam asked. 

“You know what I mean, wise ass. If anything is off, we get out and regroup. Happy?”

He knew Sam wasn’t, but his brother was also smart enough to know that was the best he was getting out of Dean. 

They made their way to the front of the house, low and fast through the overgrown grass. They hustled up the steps and tucked into the cubby on the front porch. 

Dean was digging through his pocket for his lock pick when Sam reached past him to nudge the door. It squeaked as it swung easily open. Not unsettling at all. 

The instant Dean poked his head inside he had to bring his arm up to cover his nose. He muffled a cough in his elbow at the stench in the air. 

“What the hell is that?” 

Sam stood there like he didn’t even smell it while Dean wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t pass out if he actually went inside. Even from the porch, it was strong enough to sting his eyes. 

“What’s what?” Sam asked.

“How do you not smell that? It’s like a fucking stink bomb went off in there.” 

It wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar scent. The air was scorched, laced with exotic spices he couldn’t place, but beneath it was the reek of death and decay. 

“I guess my nose is stuffy.”

“Stuffy my ass. I’m hauling you to a doctor when we’re finished here.”

Sam grimaced and closed the door behind them. The house’s windows were boarded up, letting through only enough narrow streams of sunlight to cast unsettling shadows over the room. 

The living room’s furniture was covered in dust cloths like someone had been planning on returning, but the decades of dust accumulation said they’d never made it. The floor was cluttered with all kinds of crap Dean couldn’t make out, layers of garbage that masked the rotting state of the floorboards.

Dean cringed as he walked. All the training in the world wouldn’t let him shift his weight on this old floor without making noise. It wasn’t all that unlikely the next board would just give way and he’d fall through right into the witch’s sour brew. 

Sam managed to do what Dean was failing at and walked across the room without making a single creak. For someone with so much bulk, the kid moved like a jaguar. 

“Dean, something’s off here,” Sam said.

“Yeah, there’s a witch doctor cooking rotting cats in the basement.”

Dean stopped as his shuffling boot thudded softly against something large. He reluctantly lowered his arm from his nose to pull a small flashlight from his pocket.

The sinking feeling in his gut was confirmed when the narrow beam of light lit a pale hand lying limp on the floor at the top of a staircase. The light’s beam trailed up to see the still, bearded face. Mackey. It only took a moment to see that it wasn’t a fresh kill. 

Dean snapped off the light. His jaw clamped hard as his hand balled into a fist around the flashlight. He hissed a curse beneath his breath and took a swing at the empty air. 

“How long do you think...?” Sam asked.

“That wasn’t Mackey that called me. Damn it!”

“Dean, get out now.” 

“Forget it. These dicks killed almost a dozen people to get us here. Now they damn well gotta deal with me.”

Ignoring the plea in his brother’s eyes, Dean stepped over the body. He couldn’t see what was at the bottom of the stairs, but someone was down there. Flickering lights from dancing flames below barely lit the long staircase, but it was enough for Dean to find his footing. 

“Dean, behind you!” 

Dean instinctively ducked down. He didn’t need to see behind him to trust his brother’s warning. When he spun around, he saw something with Mackey’s face cocking back a fist. 

He dodged to the side, letting the thing’s hit whizz past his head to crack the drywall. Dean followed up with a quick punch of his own that Mackey easily intercepted with an iron grip. 

Dean’s face contorted as he bit back a cry of pain. The thing was twisting his arm hard enough the bones felt on the verge of snapping. Instead of twisting the rest of the way, the thing swung Dean around, heaving him down the stairs. 

He hit the steps halfway down, the impact forcing all the air from his lungs. The shock of pain left him barely able to curl into a roll as he tumbled the rest of the way to the bottom of the staircase. His body sprawled over the cold concrete. 

Dean blinked his eyes open, feeling for his gun. The instant his fingers closed around the handle, he rolled onto his back to take a shot at Mackey’s face. The thing didn’t even flinch as the bullet entered its skull. 

Surging forward, Dean tackled the Mackey look alike, knocking them both back to the ground. They wrestled until Dean was on top, straddling Mackey and pinning him to the floor. 

Dean shoved his hands beneath the denim jacket and found the machete still stashed inside. He jerked it free from its sheath and stumbled back onto his feet. 

Before Mackey could make another move, Dean swung the blade as hard as he could, loping Mackey’s head clean off. Black ooze seeped from the body as it collapsed to the floor. 

Dean froze when footsteps echoed in the darkness behind him. A second man, who was also probably a leviathan considering the smug look on his face, stepped into the fire’s light. 

He looked a world and a few centuries apart from modern day Louisville. His face was gnarled and skin sunken as if he were a living mummy. His beard and mustache were white as the moon and twined down the front of his robe. 

His hands were folded casually within his large sleeves. With a sickening smile that cracked his toothless face, he made Death look downright handsome. 

“Dean Winchester. Such an honor to finally meet you one-on-one after I’ve heard so much about you.”

On the surface, this seemed like the least imposing enemy Dean had ever faced. The guy looked older than dirt with a frail frame that wouldn’t hold up to a strong wind, but he reeked of old magic that raised the hairs at the nape of Dean’s neck.

“Yeah, well, it’s all true, Gandalf,” Dean said. “Especially the part about me being able to gank any ugly ass monster.”

Dean’s finger tightened around the hilt of the machete. He reared it back, preparing to strike at the first opportunity. Despite his itch to end this fast, he knew he was only going to get one swing. 

“That rumor about these sorcerers achieving immortality through their collection of souls, it’s quite true.” The thing walked a loose circle around Dean as it spoke, staying just out of the machete’s blade range. “A millennium of sucking off the souls of others, quite a feat for one of you monkeys. Of course, I’ve been feeding his corpse to the scorpions, but I do rather like being him.”

Dean’s eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness that he could see the hacked up remains of a body rotting in front of a line of shelves. It was far riper than Mackey, with rancid juices pooled around it. That explained part of the smell. 

The shelves behind it were stocked with jars and glass tanks. Most of them looked empty from where Dean stood, but they had bedding for things to hide in and were no doubt loaded with the venom sources that had been sending people to their graves. 

“There’s enough venom here to clear out this entire suburb. Do you really think that a blade can save you?”

“I got nothing to lose,” Dean said. “How about you?”

“Even if you could kill me in any other form, I’ve taken on the essence of an immortal and you think a sound whack to the spine will end my existence? By all means, Winchester, take your best shot.”

Dean coiled, ready to swing. “Someone’s obviously never seen Highlander.” 

The witch’s next smile was a toothy grin that tore his face in half. The leviathan’s true face emerged with a serpent tongue hissing from between rows of snapping razor teeth. 

Dean scrambled back, nearly hitting the candle covered altar that stood in the middle of the room. Beside it was the main source of light, a fire in the woodstove. 

Pans that Dean didn’t want to know the contents of boiled on the stovetop and the door was removed to expose the flames inside. Given the amount of smoke pouring into the room, the outside vent had to be closed. 

Dean choked as he tripped through the smoke. It burned his nostrils and scorched his lungs. Sometimes it felt like his life centered around smoke and flames, but he’d never smelled smoke like this. 

His legs collapsed beneath him, the machete clattering to the floor beside him. He began to lose focus as his body was overwhelmed with a fit of hacking coughs. He distantly heard his brother shouting his name. 

Tears poured down his face as his eyes fought to expel whatever noxious fumes were in the smoke. Fighting blind, he kicked out against hands that grabbed for him. His attempt to crawl away didn’t get him far before the force of his coughs overtook his ability to move. He rolled onto his side and felt for the machete. 

A hard boot came down on his hand, not hard enough to crush, but warning that it could. Dean flexed his fingers beneath it. 

“Fire is used in the creation of the poison, but I added a special component since I was expecting you. Simple spell work, a few unpleasant ingredients and your body starts shutting down. Your own breath is incapacitating you.” 

A hand clamped hard over Dean’s jaw as he struggled to breathe without pulling in any more of the smoke that was now filling the basement. Clawed nails scratched over his cheek, leaving hot lines of blood, before moving up to scrape at the stitches on his brow.

“You can’t even hold your insides in without floss,” the leviathan said. “Why were you chosen over us?”

When the hand holding his chin released him, Dean collapsed back to the ground. He fought to get onto his hands and knees. Once he did, a firm push of a boot against his ribs tipped him back over.

“So fragile, yet you just won’t die.”

Footsteps moved away. Dean strained his ears and tried to follow the leviathan’s movements. His best guess put the thing over at the altar. Dean’s eyes drifted to the blurry light of the fire crackling in the woodstove. 

He should put it out. More importantly, he should get up and go find Sam, but instead he barely managed to sit up and prop himself against the wall. His eyelids drooped and fluttered as he lost the battle to keep them open. His head nodded to the side, too heavy for his neck to support. 

Dean shook his head and tried to keep focused. His chest hurt from drawing in air that was too thick to breathe. He squeezed his useless burning eyes closed. The smoke had muddled his mind to the point that he couldn’t draw together a coherent thought.

He jerked when he realized the leviathan was kneeling in front of him and had set a box on Dean’s lap. His ears strained at an odd noise, a hissing from within the box, barely audible over the snapping of the fire. The box shifted slightly against his thighs from the vibrating movements inside. 

“This one I made especially for you. It’s perfect.” There was reverence in the leviathan’s voice as he ran his hand over the box. “It will ensure your mortality.”

“You can kill us all you want,” Dean rasped, “but you can’t keep us dead.”

The thing laughed, a cackle cold and hard against Dean’s ringing ears. “Two down already. You’re all that’s left.”

Panic swelled up, holding Dean to consciousness. His eyes scanned the fuzzy darkness. He tried to croak his brother’s name. 

“If you lay even one finger on my brother…” 

Dean’s whispered would-be threat dissolved into a cough that tore at his insides. He doubled over gasping, clutching his chest. 

“Your brother? Is that who you thought you were speaking with?” 

“That’s who’s gonna kick your ass.”

It tilted its head, leaning in closer. Hollow eyes examined Dean as if he was a bug beneath a magnifying glass. 

“And your fractured mind lets you believe this? Fascinating. Your minds are even more fragile than your paper bodies. It scarcely seems worth all this grandeur to squash out what little remains of you.”

Strong hands righted Dean again. Fingers tightened around his throat, pinning him in place. His arms were too heavy to haul up from the floor to try to pry away the choking grip. 

“I should take this opportunity to inform you not to waste the little time you have left. All the hospitals in the contiguous US are waiting for you and would be more than delighted to admit you. Not that any doctor could save you.”

The leviathan lifted the box again, pulling back the lid. It reached in for something, but came back empty as the box was knocked from its hands. Dean blinked his eyes and tried to see what had pushed it away, but they were the only ones here and the leviathan looked as confused as Dean.

In the next moment, something splashed over him. The grip around his neck went slack as the air was filled with the leviathan’s screams. 

The leviathan was yanked back and hurtled onto the floor. The machete fell like a guillotine over its neck. Dean’s eyes slowly focused on a sudsy bucket lying on the floor beside the sizzling body. 

“Sammy?”

He moved his eyes up to see Sam standing over him. Slowly, Dean realized the fire was out. His next breath came easier, but an attempt at a deeper breath ended in another coughing fit. 

“Dean.”

The machete’s blade clattered to the floor beside him. Sam knelt in front of him, his hands running over Dean, anxiously checking his neck and arms. 

“Didn’t get me,” Dean mumbled.

Sam looked around the basement then quickly hauled Dean up, brushing him off while supporting his weight. “We’re getting you out of here.”

Dean wasn’t sure how they made it up the stairs or out of the house. His next conscious thought was lying on his back in the scratchy overgrown grass staring up into the sun.

His lungs greedily sucked in a long overdue gasp of fresh air. Dean’s eyes and throat were still painfully raw. He closed his eyes again and grimaced as he swallowed. 

“Here, I got you some water.”

Sam slipped an arm around Dean’s back and helped him to sit up enough to drink. For once, he didn’t complain about it being alcohol-free and chugged it down until Sam pulled the water bottle from his lips. 

“Come on, Dean, you gotta get up,” Sam urged with a tug on his arm. “You need to get out of here.”

The fog was already clearing from his head, but that stench was never coming out of his clothes. Dean rubbed his eyes and sat up. They were outside the house. 

“Is the witch dead?” Dean asked.

“No, it was a leviathan. I buried both the heads, but there’s not telling how many more are around here. You gotta go.”

“Yeah...okay.” Dean honestly didn’t even remember what had happened, only something the leviathan had said. “You’re okay?”

“I’m, fine, Dean. Come on, get up.”

“You’re a damn bossy bitch.” Dean took another breath than staggered to his feet. He turned to look back at the house. “We gotta torch this place.”

“We can’t. The authorities will need the creatures inside for symptom identification. There are still two victims in the hospital.”

Dean shook his head at the string of words that was too long for him to process right now. For the moment, he didn’t have a lot of choice but to default to his brother’s superior reasoning skills. 

He looked down to see a wooden box lying on the ground. It had the bowl of worms symbol Sam had showed him earlier burnt into the lid. 

“Is it still in there?” Dean asked.

“The box was empty when I found it. Do you know what was inside?”

Dean tapped the toe of his boot against the box, half expecting a hiss. “Uh…snake I think or one damn big cockroach.”

“What’s with you and cockroaches?”

“It’s the only bug I know and those big ugly mothers hiss. Lay off.” Dean rubbed his throbbing temples. “So that thing’s slithering around that basement looking for us?”

“I don’t know where it is. We couldn’t find it, which is why you gotta get out of here.”

Dean couldn’t argue with wanting to get out of here, but he also couldn’t believe they were just walking away. The leviathans had gone to all the trouble to set an elaborate trap only to put on a crap show. 

It wasn’t the fact the job felt unfinished. He wasn’t sure about those already hospitalized, but no one else was going to get sick. It wasn’t the case at all. 

It was the words that echoed in his head. 

_You’re all that’s left._


	3. Chapter 3

Once Dean’s head had cleared, he’d called the hospital from a back alley payphone. The two victims still hospitalized hadn’t made any spontaneous recoveries. Killing the source of the magic hadn’t been enough. 

They were still dying because of Dean. 

But he could’ve argued until he was blue in the face and still wouldn’t have convinced Sam that they needed to stay. They were back on the road because his annoying as hell little brother had finally hit home the point that staying in the town would only bring down more leviathans on it. 

“We can do the research in Montana as well as we could’ve done it back there,” Sam continued. 

Somehow Sam seemed to interpret the fact that Dean was silently brooding as Dean wanting to talk about it. He didn’t. 

“We’re not going to Montana,” Dean snapped. “We’re staying as close as we can while still being out of the way so just drop it, okay?”

Dean’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror, watching a convertible that came up too close behind them. Sam also turned to look out the rear window before settling back into his seat. 

“You think they’re following you?” Sam asked.

“These guys? No.”

Dean let off the gas to force the speeding car to back off or pass him. Despite knowing it was just some kids, he remained on edge. 

Loud garble that couldn’t actually be called music blasted from the passing car. It was obviously someone’s dad’s Corvette. A couple of rowdy teenagers with the wind whipping through their hair leaned over the back shouting some crap at him.

“Yeah, same to you,” Dean grumbled. 

He at least got satisfaction in knowing they had to be freezing their asses off. Dean had the heater on low, he sure wasn’t about to roll down a window, let alone drive around with a top down. 

“But the leviathans?” Sam asked. “You think they’re following?”

“Either that or they don’t have to.” Dean returned the pressure to the gas. It didn’t make much of a difference in their speed. “We dumped our phones and exchanged the Camaro for this piece of crap. It’s the best we can do.”

“You could head up to Canada.”

“Not happening, Sammy, and no, we’re not going to Mexico or Paris or Siberia either.” 

“Why not?”

“Because despite what porn says, French girls are stuffy and I’m not shacking up with some guy named Ivan.” 

Dean gritted his teeth at his brother’s look before shaking his head and locking his eyes back on the road ahead. 

“Why do you think?” Dean asked. “Because we don’t cut out of a fight. Not ever.”

Dean adjusted the sunglasses on his nose. He’d found them in the glove compartment after they’d stolen the car. They were too tight on his temples, probably weren’t even men’s glasses, but his eyes were still too dry and the sun too bright. 

“How’s your head?”

“Same as the last time you asked,” Dean said. “To save you the breath, so is my throat and my shoulder and my back. Give it up, Sam. I’m a hell of a lot better off than those people we abandoned back in Louisville or that hunter we didn’t even bother to torch.”

“Dean, we didn’t have time. You know that.”

“Whatever, man. I’m just tired of all this shit. Hell, I’m just tired.”

“You should pull over and get some rest.”

Dean jerked off the sunglasses. They wouldn’t stop pinching his nose and he had enough of a headache listening to his brother. He pitched them in the backseat and shot Sam the full force of his glare.

“I’m not taking a fucking nap on the side of the highway while we got leviathans on our ass and we’re not—”

“Dean!”

“Dude, what?” 

But he didn’t have to wait for the answer. He felt it an instant later, something smooth and cold slithering over his shoulder and sliding down the back of his neck. 

“Oh...what the hell?” 

Dean tried to knock it off, but it had already disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt and was squirming across his chest beneath the layers of cotton. He swerved the car onto the shoulder, breaks squealing. Even before Dean’s hands had left the wheel, Sam was already trying to help him out of his jacket. 

He kicked open the car door and stumbled out, throwing the jacket to the ground. His flannel was down around his elbows and his t-shirt halfway off when he felt the sting. 

Fangs pierced into his jugular. A burn as white hot as Alastair’s razor shot through his throat and into his chest, squeezing his heart and tingling the nerves clear at the tips of his fingers. 

Dean’s hands flailed to grab a hold of the wriggling serpent as it worked its pumping fangs deeper into his flesh. He managed to snatch the flicking tail and rip the thing from his throat. It tore flesh, opening a gash that let blood flow hot down his neck. 

He staggered to the side before his knees gave out and hit the concrete hard. His breaths came in quick, ragged gasps as he fell forward onto all fours. His trembling arms dripped with the sheen of sweat and barely caught him before his forehead hit the road beneath him. 

In the back of the pain induced haze he heard Sam shouting, but couldn’t make out the words. He barely registered the hand rubbing his back, begging him to breathe.

Suddenly he did. A sharp breath and his lungs again opened. 

He sucked in air until his chest stopped hurting. Slowly, he came around enough to feel the moisture rimming his otherwise sandpaper-dry eyes. He scrubbed it away with an unsteady hand before letting his brother help him to his knees. 

Sam’s hand was already at his throat. He pressed Dean’s rumpled flannel there to slow the blood flow.

“That was my last good shirt,” Dean rasped.

He was still lightheaded, but aware enough to feel Sam pull away the shirt to check the wound. His heart still raced, but was starting to feel less like it was about to explode. 

“Dean...”

“Tell me we just had a rattler slip into the car.”

Sam was silent too long before answering. It was answer enough. Dean could barely focus enough to listen when Sam finally did speak. 

“Dean, I don’t recognize the species. It must’ve slipped in the car while we were inside the house.”

“We dumped the car,” Dean said, grasping for the few facts he could make sense of.

“Yeah, I know. It must’ve ended up in the weapons bag. Maybe it was in your jacket the whole time. I don’t know, but we gotta get you to a hospital. I caught the snake. They can figure out whatever antivenin you need. With the other cases, Louisville General might even already have it stocked.”

“Wait...you caught it?” Dean asked. “That little bastard ripped my throat out and you just caught it?”

“I know how to pick up a snake, Dean.”

“Since when?”

“Since you fell asleep watching that Discovery channel snake marathon. Come on, can you stand?”

“Yeah, I can stand. Get the hell off me.” Dean shoved his brother’s hands away and quickly grappled for the car door to haul himself off the ground. “You heard them. No hospitals and you’re the one that wanted to stay the hell away from Kentucky.”

“Don’t you think that’s why they said it? To keep you away from medical help?” Sam asked. “They can’t watch every hospital and it doesn’t matter if they can. One way they might find you, the other you die for sure.”

“No, one way we both die for sure, the other it’s just me.”

“Dean, don’t you even...”

“Think about it, Sam. Every victim so far has died bloody in a hospital bed. We already know the doctors can’t do shit.” Dean steadied his breathing and adjusted the pressure of the shirt against his throat. “We don’t even know for sure this has anything to do with the goo crap. Sometimes a snake is just a snake.”

“Is that what you think this is?” Sam narrowed his eyes on Dean. “Even if that’s what you want to pretend, a non-venomous snake did not just drop you like that.” 

Dean shrugged it off. “It just surprised me is all. I wouldn’t be standing and talking if it was that bad. Really, I think that thing was a dud.” 

“We’re not taking any chances.” 

“You’re right. We’re not. We’ll research this thing, see what it is and if it’s from Zimbabwe then we’ll talk.” 

Sam opened his mouth, but Dean held up his hand to stop him from saying anything. 

“Don’t. Just don’t, Sam. I know. You got a bad feeling. Well, join the club and suck it up. If they set this up, it was to make us panic and throw ourselves to the wolves.”

“Then why tell you to stay away from the hospitals?” Sam asked.

“Because they know you’re a damn bleeding heart and you’d drag me there anyway.”

“That’s not it, Dean. That can’t be it.”

Dean raised his brow at Sam’s conviction. His brother wasn’t generally one to jump to conclusions and they didn’t know enough about the leviathans to be sure of anything here. 

“Then what?”

“They probably know you’re a self-less idiot who’ll just let himself die.”

“Geez, Sammy. Thanks for the vote of confidence there.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Uh huh.” Dean scoffed. “And just for the damn record, I got more commonsense in my pinky finger then you got in your whole damn body.” 

Sam shook his head before bringing both hands up to rub his face and push his bangs aside. “This isn’t gonna just go away.”

“Dude, I seriously feel fine. My neck just hurts. Can we just get back in the car and drive to somewhere we’re not sitting ducks?”

“Fine, but if anything...”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. If I have to go to a hospital, I’ll go to the damn hospital, but it’s gonna be at least two state lines away so let’s hit the road already.”

“You at least gotta patch up that wound,” Sam said.

“You can do it while we drive.”

Dean waited for his brother to walk around to the back of the car. When Sam was out of sight behind the trunk, Dean let himself grimace, swallowing down the sour taste of nausea. 

He tried to blink away the dizziness that made his head swim. At least he was getting used to the sensation. Maybe he didn’t feel fine, but he didn’t feel that much worse than he had before.

“Where’s that damn snake anyway?” Dean called back as his brother closed the trunk.

Dean could still feel its cool scales crawling over his skin. He snatched his jacket off the ground, but wasn’t cold enough at the moment to even think about putting it back on. Instead, he tossed it into the backseat. 

On the other side of the car, Sam held up a large takeout food bag with the top secured. Dean groaned. 

“Dude, my lunch was in there.”

“I can’t believe you transferred this garbage from the other car. Twice now. Dean, the only good thing about this bag is that it’s so full of bacteria it will kill the snake before we have to take it back out.”

“Then I guess the stupid ass snake saved my life. Told you it wasn’t all bad.” Dean leaned forward to listen to the bag and didn’t hear a thing. “You sure it’s even in there?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” 

Sam gave the bag a shake. The contents hissed in protest, thrashing against the sides. Dean suppressed a shiver. That wasn’t the first time he’d heard that hiss.

“Super.”

Dean dropped into the seat and wiped the sweat from his brow. Sam settled in the passenger seat beside him with a first aid kit on his lap and the snake bagged on the floor by his feet. 

“Give me the snake,” Dean said. “The thing already bit me.”

“It’s fine, Dean. It’s not going anywhere. Just move your hand.” 

Dean let out a huff as Sam took the shirt away from his throat. Sam poked at his neck, the coolness of his fingers easing Dean’s racing pulse. He let himself relax into the touch.

Sam made a displeased sound before pulling his hand away. “This is still bleeding pretty bad.” 

“I’ve bled a lot worse. Just make it stop and I’ll be fine.” 

Dean tilted his head to the side to let Sam work as he turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. 

“Piece of shit!” 

Dean kicked the floor panel and reared back for another kick until Sam put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back against the seat, forcing him to take a breath. Kicking things never worked any better for him than it had for Dad, but some things just needed a proper ass kicking.

With a grumble, Dean turned the key again. It took four more tries before the engine choked to life. 

“No wonder that moron left the keys in this thing,” Dean said as he pulled back out into the road. “We never should have put my baby in the warehouse.”

“You know we had to, Dean.”

“Yeah, to hide from the leviathans. Great fucking job we’ve done with that. They’re going to get us one way or another, at least I want to go out in my baby.”

“Keep talking like that and you are going to the hospital.”

“Just shut up and play with your snake.”

Dean shoved his brother’s hand away once the gauze was secured to his neck. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to pass out in a hospital bed. He just didn’t want to die in one.

~~~

“Dean, where are you going?”

Sam’s words stirred Dean from the fog he’d settled into. He hadn’t been thinking about where he was driving, just drifting on autopilot. Away had been the only thought in his mind and even that had vacated back at the last state line. 

Dean blinked, forced himself to focus. His foot held the pedal pressed near to the floor, not that it got him any real speed in this junker. He took in a breath and eased up on the gas. 

Uncertainty fluttered in his stomach. Panic momentarily overtook him as his easy certainty was seized by the realization he had no idea where he was. His eyes scanned the open expanse of road. It was just clear sailing with nothing but open fields of gently rolling hills. 

He swerved the car when a gated driveway came into view. The gate’s wood had long since rotted away and the no trespassing sign lay half buried beneath fallen fence slats. 

Dean still couldn’t say where he was in words, but he felt an overwhelming sense of familiarity as he headed down the private drive.

It was long and winding with the end out of sight over the next hill. The road had once been gravel, but had mostly filled in with dirt. Tufts of weeds eked out a living in-between the compacted tire ruts. Tall grasses crowded the edges, long blades brushing against the car as it drove by, kicking up dust in its wake. 

“Get back on the main road,” Sam said. 

The words had the sharp edge of an order. They would’ve sounded right coming out of Dad’s mouth, but sounded foreign on Sam’s tongue. 

Dean shot a look at his brother, unsure whether he should be pissed or concerned. “You asked where we’re going. We’re going this way.”

“No, we need to stay on the road.”

“You’re the one that practically yelled at me to pull over at the last driveway. Will you just relax? There’s no way anyone’s gonna come out this way.”

“This is too far out,” Sam said. “If something goes wrong...”

“What else could possibly go wrong?” 

Sam’s face was tight, his eyes distant. Dean was too tired to argue so he just shook his head and continued down the road. The uneven grade of the road jostled the car, biting the seat belt into Dean’s neck and rekindling the nausea he’d thought he’d kicked. 

When they reached the peak of the hill, the skeletal remains of an old dairy barn came into view. The faded red barn was surrounded by a barely standing old barbed wire fence and set off by the crystal blue sky. 

Dean was almost sure the barn was going to be where they were staying until a house came into view. It wasn’t much of a house, but it also wasn’t any worse than most the places they’d been staying lately and it was better than the sagging barn. 

The house at least still had a roof and aside from a few broken windows looked reasonably intact. The whitewashed siding was wearing to the grey wood beneath, but the walls were standing and the porch was in good shape. 

Dean stopped the car out front and reached to turn the key to shut off the engine. His hand froze when he really looked at the house. His gaze fixed on the porch swing and his mild sense of déjà vu rose to a suffocating intensity, freezing his mind in the struggle to connect pieces. 

“Dean, we have to go.”

Sam’s words stirred him from his paralysis. Dean glanced once more at the porch before shutting off the engine that was on its last legs anyway.

“Forget it. I’m too fucking tired to keep driving.” 

It wasn’t even a lie. He was having a hell of a time keeping his eyes open. 

Dean pushed open his car door. The simple motion of throwing his legs out was enough to leave his head swimming. He took a breath of the clean air while he waited for his vision to settle. 

The building breeze whistled over the land through the waving grasses. There were no human-made sounds. It was only the rustling wind and birds chirping in a big old tree out back behind the house. 

When Dean went to stand, Sam was already there to steady him. Dean was too disoriented to fight him off. His eyes drifted back to the porch swing, shaded from the late afternoon sun by the porch’s awning.

“Does this place look familiar to you?” Dean asked. 

Sam pursed his lips without meeting Dean’s eyes. His gaze was also on the porch and he was concentrating way too hard. Then it hit Dean like a sucker punch to the gut. 

“Fuck. We’ve been here before. That poltergeist hunt for Bobby’s old friend.” Dean snapped his fingers as the memory flooded back. “Whoever’s daughter...that hot chick...Kathy. How could I not remember that?”

Dean rubbed his hand over the back of his head, his face crinkled in concentration. It felt as if it had been a lifetime ago, but he was pretty sure it had only been a couple of weeks. 

“Do you remember it now?” Sam asked. 

He felt a tinge of panic when he reached further into his memory and still came up blank. Dean’s eyes darted anxiously to Sam. His brother’s expression was mostly unreadable, but his eyes were flooded with worry. 

“Um…I guess. I mean, I know we were here, but...no. That’s about it.”

“Your head got messed up pretty bad.” The expression of concern deepened over Sam’s face. His eyes fell to the ground and his voice grew quiet. “Dean...I didn’t think you were gonna make it.”

“Oh.” Dean’s response was emotionless, confused. Then understanding set in. “Oh...so this whole Florence Nightingale, not shutting up about me dying crap...it’s all because of this hunt?”

Sam nodded. 

Dean’s forehead scrunched, tugging at the stitches on his brow. “I don’t remember.”

“It’s okay. You were pretty touch and go for the first month.”

“The first month? How long ago were we here?” Sam looked like he was planning on walking away rather than answering the question. Dean grabbed a hold of his brother’s arm and spun him around. “How long, Sam?”

“A couple months.”

“Months? Damn it.” Dean shook his head. “So the leviathans were busy taking over the world, Cas was chasing butterflies and you were stuck taking care of my comatose ass?”

“Dean...”

“No. That’s...that’s just craptastic. Just fucking awesome.” 

Even while he was unconscious he could still manage to screw everything up, but that wasn’t exactly a revelation and there was nothing he could do about it now. Dean turned back towards the house. 

“But this hunt...we did finish it?” Dean asked.

He couldn’t remember the details of the hunt, but he knew what he’d said to Mackey was true. They didn’t walk away from unfinished jobs. Just to be on the safe side, he still wanted to make sure they weren’t about to get their asses handed to them by a poltergeist when he opened the front door. 

“Yeah, you did. Just.... Dean, I don’t wanna be here.”

The earnestness in Sam’s voice and plea in his eyes shot Dean straight back to a time when Sammy was short enough to still look up at him. 

He saw his little brother, nine years old, shaking hands bracing a .45 on the mattress. Dean had stood in the bedroom doorway of the apartment watching his brother peek out from beneath the covers. 

When he’d asked Sammy what the hell he was doing, his little brother had told him he was waiting for the monster to come out of the closet so he could shoot it. Dean had snatched the gun out of Sammy’s hands and demanded to know where he’d gotten it. 

Dad. 

Dad had given Sammy the gun before running out the door for a hunt. Apparently, he’d figured his youngest was old enough to defend himself if something made it past the salt line in front of the closet. 

Dean knew Dad hadn’t really thought that. He’d just thought nothing was really in the closet and it was time for Sammy to man up. Dean hadn’t agreed and had spent the rest of the night making up excuses, telling Sammy what a practical joker Dad could be. 

It hadn’t been funny then. It was even less funny now. 

He’d put Sam through more than enough crap and had no business making him stay at some stupid ass house he didn’t want to be at, but he also wasn’t going to kill his brother by passing out behind the wheel again or driving around in a car that was on the verge of an engine fire. 

“Okay, I get that,” Dean said. His tone was sincere and his voice heavy with an unspoken apology. “But this sorry excuse for a car isn’t gonna get us much further and I seriously just need to stop driving. As soon as we verify I’m not dying, I’ll tune up the car and we’ll get back on the road. Deal?”

“I guess. How are you feeling, anyway?” 

Dean led Sam up the steps to the house as he did his best to ignore the question. He looked over the old swing that was still tugging at his memory. His fingers ran over a dark stain on the wood paneling. 

Something flashed in his mind. His brother slumped over on the swing, blood drenching his shirt. Rain poured off the roof, a cold wind in the air. Dean’s hands were sticky. The body clutched in his arms was cold.

Dean jerked, nearly tripping over his own feet. 

The sun was back, the wind warm and Sam’s hand clutched his arm steadying him. Dean’s eyes were wide as he looked over his brother. Sam stood there, shirt clean, anxiously watching him. Dean set his hand over Sam’s to verify it was really there.

“Did you just black out?”

“What?” Dean asked. “No…I don’t think so.”

“Are you dizzy?”

“Not really.”

“Dean, I need to know how you’re feeling.” 

Dean let go of Sam’s hand and stepped away. He looked back to the swing before shaking it off. It was more than he could deal with right now. 

“I’m feeling like smashing you in the face if you ask one more time how I’m doing.”

He pushed past Sam and shoved open the front door that he somehow knew wouldn’t be locked. The place wasn’t bad. There wasn’t a television in sight, but the furniture didn’t suck. Just the fact that it had furniture put it above and beyond most of their sleeping spots lately. 

Sam rushed in behind him like his hair was on fire. He moved fast enough to piss off the snake Dean hadn’t realized he was still carrying around in the bag. Instead of dealing with the snake, Sam just tossed the bag on the kitchen table and started rearranging the furniture. 

Dean stood in the doorway. The kitchen had a door, but it had been splintered from the hinges, left swinging loosely on its frame. Dean tapped the heavy wood before tilting his head at Sam. 

His brother was even fussing with the damn braided wool throw rug, jerking it to a new spot on the floor like the room design was too offensive to deal with a second longer. Dean didn’t bother to try to figure Sam out. He just walked over to lean against the counter, toeing the remains of a shattered plate and worked on forcing his heavy eyelids to stay open. 

“Dude, you need to chill out,” Dean said. “What did that rug ever do to you?”

But Sam didn’t relax. He just shot over to the survey the cobweb infested pantry. 

Dean rested his elbow on the counter to prop up his head as he watched Sam shove boxes of food aside. “I think lunch can wait.”

“I’m looking for a container.” Sam poked his head out of the pantry. “Dean, sit down before you fall down. I got this.”

“You got what exactly?” 

Sam didn’t reply, just pulled a clear Rubbermaid container off the shelf. He popped open the lid and dumped the bags of dried beans, boxes of cornmeal and grits onto the floor. When the container was empty he set it down on the table. 

Dean couldn’t figure out what his brother was doing before Sam grabbed the takeout bag and poured the contents into the container. He was so fast the snake didn’t even see him. Sam slammed on the lid, leaving the stunned snake to slither around on top of Dean’s half eaten sub sandwich. 

“Look at you, master snake handler.” Dean lowered himself into a chair across the table from the thing. “If I’d known you could do that, we could of joined the circus years ago.”

“Dean, focus.” Sam opened up his laptop and immediately started typing. “It could be a copperhead.”

Dean leaned over the table and shook his head. “That’s no damn copperhead.”

“How do you know?” Sam asked.

“’Cause I’ve been bit by a copperhead. Didn’t feel anything like this. It doesn’t even look like one anyway.”

Sam glanced up from his computer. “When were you bitten by a copperhead?”

“In Virginia. On a hunt with Dad.”

Dean left the unspoken while you were at Stanford hang in the air. A snake bite was the least that had happened to him during those years. 

Sam nodded to himself and returned his eyes to the computer. “I don’t know...maybe a viper?”

“No, it’s too big to be a viper.” At Sam’s look, Dean shrugged. “Discovery channel, dude, remember?” 

Dean examined the loosely coiled snake closer. It did have a bit of triangular head like a viper, but was stocky with light and dark brown stripes. 

“I saw this thing on one of those shows,” Dean said.

Sam didn’t look up, only motioned for Dean to hurry his thought along. “You’re gonna have to be a lot more specific than some show.”

Dean knew what show it was, but couldn’t make himself say it aloud because it had been one of those top ten series. He was pretty sure the episode had featured the world’s ten most deadly snakes. 

“Dead rattler or something,” Dean muttered. “I don’t know.”

Sam’s fingers flew over the keyboard and then froze. “Crap.”

Dean tried to lean over far enough to see the screen without actually having to get out of his chair. “What?”

“Death Adder.” 

Sam turned the laptop around for Dean to see. Dean looked between the photos of the snake and the one that was hissing in the box. For all he knew, most snakes looked the same, but he couldn’t deny that this one did look like the picture. 

Sam turned the screen back. His eyes scanned over the accompanying text. He kept reading, remaining silent as Dean stared at him.

“So?” Dean asked. “Am I gonna drop or what?”

“Fifty percent of cases are lethal without antivenin.”

“That’s not so bad,” Dean said. “We take at least a fifty percent chance of winding up dead every time we get out of bed.” He winced as the pain burning through his veins kicked up again. “But anti-venom doesn’t sound terrible right now.”

“And it’s probably readily available - in Australia.” Sam looked up from his laptop and met Dean’s eyes. “This is the Gu, Dean.”

“Or it’s a random snake from the goo master’s collection.” 

“Maybe, but without knowing for sure...”

“Yeah, I know,” Dean said.

He didn’t actually believe it was just a snake. He knew it was the thing he’d heard in the box and thinking happy thoughts to the contrary wasn’t going to keep him alive. 

“Okay.” Dean gingerly rubbed his hand over the bandages on his throat. “So what do we do?”

“Bobby and... his books. There are some cures mentioned, but as far as anything legit, we got nothing. That’s why we knew staying in Louisville to help those people was a dead end.”

“All right.” Dean leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. “But between the choices of taking a one way ticket trip down memory lane and trying some hack cure, I’ll take that hack cure.”

“You could give the Gu to someone as a present.”

Dean didn’t bother to visually acknowledge Sam’s sarcasm. He kept his eyes closed and shrugged. “Great. You got Dick’s address? Come on, Sam. You combed those books for hours. There’s gotta be something better than that.” 

“There just isn’t. All I’ve got is saying the name of the Gu owner or pumping you full of a stronger venom and hoping it’ll cancel out what you’ve already been exposed to. I don’t know if it will stop the Gu, but it will definitely kill you.”

“I guess I’ll just kiss my ass goodbye then.”

“No. That’s not what I’m saying, Dean. We’ll get some other books and figure this out. We just should have stayed out of it to begin with.”

“I told you so? Really not helping right now, Sammy.”

Dean cracked an eye open when his brother fell silent again. He watched Sam’s eyes move frantically over the computer screen. Dean knew he should be doing something useful like digging through the books, but that would involve having to actually open his eyes. 

“Are you tired?” Sam asked.

“Uh, yeah. Or...I guess.”

Sam walked around to Dean’s side of the table and crouched down in front him. He stared into his eyes for an unsettling long time before feeling the need to use his thumb to lift up Dean’s eyelid. 

Dean jerked upright in the chair and slapped Sam’s hand away. “What the hell are you doing?”

“You’re not falling asleep,” Sam said. “It’s ptosis.”

“Bless you.”

Sam rolled his eyes as he stood back up. “Your eyelids are just drooping.”

“Only you would need a funny word to say I can’t keep my eyes open. And just how’s that different from falling asleep?”

“The death adder venom is a neurotoxin. Ptosis is the first symptom of paralysis.”

Dean stiffened. “Paralysis?” 

Sam turned away, walking back to his computer. “We have some time before the death adder symptoms reach the worst point, but we don’t know what else we’re dealing with. The other victims manifested multiple symptoms, most in progression, but...”

“What’s the worst?” Dean asked.

“It won’t get that far. The slow progression will give us time to treat the symptoms while we figure the rest out.”

“Super.”

“Dean, I’m gonna need you to be totally honest about how you’re feeling. All I’ve got to go on here are your symptoms.” 

Dean gripped the armrests of the chair hard, trying to focus the pain through his clenched fingers. He got what Sam was saying, but he didn’t want to get his brother worked up about things he couldn’t fix. 

“Does it really hurt that bad? Dean? I need you to talk to me.”

“It feels like my blood’s fucking on fire.”

“At the site of the wound?” 

“No. Everywhere.”

“Dean, your pain tolerance is off the chart and what I’m reading says this thing shouldn’t hurt that much. Maybe some localized pain, but nothing bad.”

“Oh, never mind,” Dead said. “If Wikipedia says I should feel fine then I’m just super.”

“That’s not what I mean. Either you already have other symptoms or we’re not looking at the snake we think we are. Do you feel nauseous?”

Dean hadn’t realized he was resting his hand over his stomach. “Yeah. Kind of. Does that mean anything?”

“It means you should lie down. Come on, let’s get you to the couch.”

Dean swatted away Sam’s hands. “No, I can help.”

“You can’t even keep your eyes open. You can help by lying down before any other symptoms set in and we have to carry you to the couch.”

Dean didn’t get out a protest before he noticed that Sam’s shirt was wet. He creased his brow as he looked at the dark spot spreading over the shoulder of Sam’s jacket. It wasn’t just water. 

“Did that snake get a bite off at you?” Dean asked.

“No.” Sam followed Dean’s eyes down to his chest before settling his confused gaze back on Dean. “Why?”

Dean’s fingers reached out and touched the wet spot. They came back red. He rubbed the blood over his fingers. As he watched, a bloom of crimson oozed through Sam’s jacket, but his brother didn’t seem to notice.

He closed his eyes again, but it didn’t stop the visual now seared in his brain. All he could see was his hands wet with his brother’s blood. 

His stomach twisted, acid rising further in his throat. He doubled forward. Only Sam’s hand stopped him from tumbling to the floor. The dry heaving didn’t do a thing to settle his stomach, but when he opened his eyes again, his hands were clean. 

Dean braced his elbows on his knees to support his head before craning his neck to look up at his brother. Sam stood over Dean rubbing his hand over his back. His jacket was pristine.

Dean shifted his eyes back to his boots. “How soon do these hallucinations start?”

“Not right away…or at least they shouldn’t. Are you seeing something?”

“Nah.” Dean rubbed his eyes. “Guess not.”

~~~

The ceiling was on fire.

Tentacles of flames crept like a hungry monster consuming everything in its path. It would eat until there was nothing left than blow the glass from the windows of the oxygen starved room.

It was a familiar sight. Dean used to see it every night after he’d tucked Sammy in and his father had collapsed drunk in a chair. He’d curled beneath the covers and held his breath, eyes locked on the black pit of the ceiling above.

First he’d smell the smoke, seeping beneath the door, innocent like a campfire then rancid and charred. Then he’d see the spark of ignition, just a flash at the corner of his vision, gone every time he risked an honest glance. 

He’d kept Sammy close just in case.

Even from a distance it heated his skin. Now it drenched him in sweat. He coughed the ashes from his lungs. It didn’t help. The air still wouldn’t come.

It was just like all those long nights after the fire had taken Mom. 

Dean couldn’t move. He lay frozen staring up somewhere beyond the water-stained ceiling. No matter how hard he tried to lift his arms or shift his legs to grab Sammy and run he couldn’t get up. He couldn’t even lift his head, but suddenly it was being lifted. 

Some nights, Dad had sleeplessly paced the room and Dean had clung to the sound of his boots treading back and forth at the end of his and Sam’s bed. Some nights, Dean hadn’t known why, but Dad would come over to the bed and lift him into his arms.

Dad would clutch him to his chest so hard it hurt and Dean didn’t care because he’d just wanted to feel those strong arms supporting him. He’d wanted to be surrounded by the smell of leather and whiskey until he couldn’t smell the ashes anymore. 

Without saying a word, Dad would carry Dean around the room and quietly, so they didn’t wake Sammy, they both cried on each other’s shoulders. 

Dad’s rough cheek would bury into Dean’s hair and Dean would hide his face against the collar of Dad’s jacket, clinging to the lapels and hoping Dad would never let him down. He always did.

“Dean, hold on there.”

Sam’s voice, not Dad’s, but like Dad’s it was desperate and commanding. 

Dean’s mouth moved, but even he didn’t recognize his own words. He wasn’t even sure what he was trying to say. He only knew that Sammy had to get out before it was too late.

He distantly registered Sam’s head close to his, long bangs brushing over his face. It tickled, but Dean couldn’t raise his arm to brush the hair away. His body was only dead weight. 

An ear pressed against his lips, listening. Even Dean’s lungs were giving up on doing their job.

“Come on, stay with me. I can’t do CPR, you gotta hang on.”

Sam voice was desperate and his movements urgent. He was blurry and distant, foggy through the smoke.

Dean wanted to reach out to him and tell him it was okay. He lost focus of even that when the tightness in his chest constricted so much that hard to breathe became close to impossible. The air stopped coming and the edge of Dean’s vision began to go black. 

His arm was moved, not by him, but someone with strong hands with cool fingers feeling over his forearm. There was sharp prick as a needle was shoved beneath his skin. The hands dropped his arm, wrapping instead around his body and pulling him close. 

“The antivenin will start working quickly, but you gotta keep breathing.”

Dean clung to the pleading words as his lungs screamed for air and the room began to fade away. He tried to see Sam, but the smoke was too thick, his vision too clouded. 

He wasn’t sure how much time passed before he started gasping and air actually came. His heart thundered in his chest as his body raced to replace the stale oxygen in his blood. 

“Fire sucked all the air,” Dean slurred as Sam helped him to sit up.

“That’s okay.” Sam squeezed his shoulder, gripped him tight. “It’s okay, Dean.”

As Sam supported him, letting Dean lean back against his chest, Dean wasn’t sure which of them his brother was trying to convince.


	4. Chapter 4

Dean jerked up the zipper of his jacket as a cool draft pushed in past the kitchen door. The weather stripping had long since rotted away and the doorframe warped, leaving the flimsy outer screen loose to flutter in the wind.

Earlier in the evening, the rattling had Dean’s fingers twitching for his gun. Three times he had actually pulled it, once he'd cocked the trigger. 

Now the clatter didn't matter. An entire army of leviathans could storm in and Dean wouldn't give them the time of day.

He was hunched over the kitchen table, hand clutching a fork as he shoveled creamy mashed potatoes into his mouth. It wasn’t until he had started gulping down the savory mouthfuls that he realized how long it had been since he’d really eaten. Not just snatch and grab, stale convenience store crap, but settled in with a real hearty meal.

They’d been raised on junk food and army rations and, since the leviathans had left them scrambling from one foxhole to the next, they’d mostly reverted back to it. Even decent fast food had become a luxury, but Dean had always eaten what he could get when he could get it. 

As long as the smell of something didn't make him wretch it was edible. He knew better than to take a meal for granted.

As a kid, Sam hadn’t known how hard food could be to get, Dean had made sure of that, but Sam still had his food issues in spades. Sam’s only choice when they were growing up had been to shut up and eat what Dean could manage to put on the table. That or go hungry until Dad got home and hope Dad was in a decent enough mood to care that Dean had offended Sam's delicate palette.

When it was something Dad had bought, Sam had been told he better eat it himself or Dad would stuff it down his throat for him. Dean had always joked about wanting front row tickets to that show, but in truth, Dad would’ve never done it and Dean would’ve never let him if he'd tried. Dad was smart enough to know that Sam wouldn’t let himself starve.

Dean had smugly thought it was all hilarious until Dad had told him Sam would eat better if Dean was more responsible about getting him edible food. It hadn’t changed what Dean bought. The few bucks a day he’d usually had to make food purchases hadn’t been enough to buy shit. He’d just ended up feeling like crap about it.

It wasn’t that Dad hadn’t wanted them to eat well, Dean was pretty sure Dad had just been too distracted to realize that a pack of gum hadn’t still cost just a nickel. Dad had always had more important things to worry about.

Food had become funny again when Sam had decided he was a rabbit. It didn’t last long, Sam swearing off greasy burgers for green crap had come only a couple months before Stanford.

Dad had thought Sam was just being contrary and, at the time, Dean had been on Dad’s side, but he’d since put together why his brother had developed his fetish for salads.

Part of it had just been Sam being a stubborn ass prick, but it had also been a signal that he was breaking away. It was Sam making his own decisions where he could, setting himself apart and grabbing for something they’d never had. Leave it to his brother to make his stand with salad fixings.

Vegetables had just never been a part of the Winchester menu. It wasn’t like Dean could throw a head of lettuce on the table and call it a meal, but for the same price he could buy a couple boxes of macaroni and cheese and be good for at least two dinners. 

Even if everything had been equal, Dean wouldn’t have shelled over Dad’s hard-earned cash for green slime that made him gag. He still didn’t believe that Sam actually liked it.

Sure, it was supposedly good for him, but despite what Dad had said, Dean couldn’t have screwed up Sam’s nutrition as bad as he’d once thought. Unless the growth hormones or whatever Sam had babbled about being in chicken nuggets explained why the kid had grown so ridiculously huge.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Sam said.

“Tell me about it,” Dean replied between mouthfuls. “How’s it that you knew how to make gravy this good and never told me? When do you ever even eat gravy?”

Sam had just finished the dishes and his eyes were glued back on one of the stupid books practically the second his ass had hit the chair. He barely glanced up from the page in front of him when he answered.

“It’s Ellen’s recipe.”

His brother had the old library spread across the table to the point that the worn wood was nearly covered. Dean wasn’t sure how Sam had managed to get all these books here so fast. He knew he’d been out a while, but Sam still would’ve had to break some serious land speed records hauling ass back here.

Dean built up his dam of mash potatoes before pulling the cooling saucepan closer to his plate. He scooped another hefty helping of gravy out and poured it over the potatoes until the dam was nearly ready to burst.

Just before he dug in again, Sam’s words sunk in. Dean wanted to just ignore them. The last thing he needed right now was to be thinking about Ellen and all the other good people he’d gotten killed for nothing, but it was just too weird of a statement to let pass.

“What’d you do, steal her cookbook?”

“No. Ellen, she...” Sam stammered to the point it was nearly comical before cutting off. He finally looked up from his book. His fingers fidgeted along the frayed edges of the pages. “Dean...”

“Yeah?”

“Nevermind.” Sam repositioned himself in his chair and returned his attention to the book he’d probably already read a hundred times. “I just can’t figure out what’s happening to you.”

“Not much. I think that stuff cured me.”

Dean washed the potatoes down with a generous helping of beer, for once, not because he needed to get wasted to make it through the night, but just because it tasted good. He shook the last drops from the bottle before setting it aside.

“That’s the thing,” Sam said. “It shouldn’t have.”

“Then why the hell did you inject me with it?” Dean asked as he reached for another beer.

Sam’s obscenely long arm shot out and snagged the fresh bottle from Dean’s fingers before he could twist off the cap.

“Hey!” Dean protested. “Dude. Get your own damn beer.”

“You need to slow down on these.”

“Why?”

Dean didn’t wait for an answer. He popped out of his chair far enough to snatch for the bottle, but Sam held it out of reach. Instead of fighting a battle he couldn’t win against orangutan arms, Dean just leaned over and grabbed another bottle from the six-pack tucked beside his feet.

“I thought we were celebrating me not being dead and all you’ve been doing is trying to find reasons why I should be.”

Sam glared at the satisfying fizzle of the fresh bottle being opened. Dean flicked the bottle cap at him. It skidded over the books before clinking onto the floor. Sam pretended not to see it.

“That injection could’ve only cured the death adder symptoms,” Sam said. “It wouldn’t have stopped the Gu.”

“We need a new name for that. I liked the golden worm things better.”

“Okay, whatever, Dean. You can call it anything you want, but the fact is, the way your symptoms progressed...it was classic death adder envenomation. It’s not consistent with the other victims. All of their symptoms were unnaturally extended.”

“Maybe it wasn’t gooey gold worms,” Dean said. “Maybe we just knocked a death whatever out of its tank during the fight and it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with that thing in the box.”

Sam ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know, Dean...”

“I know, luck ain’t usually on our side. But we can’t get the short straw every round, right?”

“It sure seems like we do....” Sam’s eyes wandered back down to the book, his finger skimming over the yellowing pages before stopping. “What did you mean about the fire?”

Dean’s next fork-full of potatoes didn’t quite reach his mouth. “What fire?”

Sam closed the book in front of him and looked up to meet Dean’s eyes. “You told me the fire had sucked out all the air.”

Dean slung the potatoes back at his plate. His fork squished around in the gravy soaked mess, his eyes lost somewhere beyond it. He abruptly dropped the fork and grabbed for the beer.

“I don’t remember.” At Sam’s unconvinced grunt, Dean surrendered. There was no point in trying to hide things while Sam was watching him this closely. “It was just a bad dream.”

“A hallucination?”

“A delusion because I couldn’t fucking breathe. Dude, I was dying. If we took seriously everything you said when you were out of it I’d have to buy you a unicorn in a French maid’s outfit. Quit overanalyzing me and eat something.”

“I ate while you were asleep. Dean, if it was a hallucination—”

“I’m gonna die choking on my own blood.”

Dean slammed the bottle down on the table. Beer sloshed over the top and ran down his hands. The fact that Sam didn’t so much as glance at the spattered book Dean was using as a coaster was testament to how much Sam was over-worrying about this thing.

“You think I don’t get that?” Dean asked. “What do you want me to do? Get my will in order or eat dinner like you’ve been griping for me to do for weeks?”

Dean dished up the last of the potatoes that he wasn’t going to let go to waste just because Sam’s appetite was soured by the fact Dean didn’t feel like shit. He scraped the pan clean before dropping it back to the table.

“Look, Sammy, I know you’re trying to help and it’s not like I don’t appreciate it. But can we just back off this thing until we know whether or not we even have a problem that needs fixing? I mean, maybe for once we just finally caught a break.”

He could tell by the look in his brother’s eyes that Sam wasn’t buying it anymore than Dean himself was. Dean got that it could all go to shit before tomorrow, that was their life, but at least for the first time in months Dean didn’t feel like complete crap and he just wanted to savor it before it all hit the fan.

Dean crammed down the last of his potatoes, scraping the plate clean before deciding to call it a night. Exhaustion was catching up with him and Sam’s dark cloud of impending doom was starting to wear on him.

He pushed back his chair, chugged what he could of the beer and grabbed his plate. His hand slapped on the book Sam was reading to get his brother’s attention.

“Well, as much fun as you are, I’m gonna go celebrate with a good night’s sleep.”

“You’ve been sleeping for hours.”

Dean dropped the plate into the sink harder than intended. He cursed at the cracking sound when the plate’s edge chipped off. He wasn’t used to handling china. Most the things he ate off could just be wadded up and chucked into the back of a car.

Mom had had dishes like these. His fingers scrounged into the drain to retrieve the broken piece. He held the plate and the fractured chunk up to see if they’d still fit back together.

Sam sighed, his voice weary. “Dean, what’re doing?”

Dean forced his jaw to relax and set the plate back down on the counter, tossing the chipped up piece on top of it. He should know better than to think he could fix anything.

“First I wasn’t sleeping enough, now I’m sleeping too much.” Dean spun back around to face Sam. “Dude, seriously, make up your mind.”

“I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I know that,” Dean said. “I want us both to be okay, but...”

He also wanted Bobby to be sitting across the table from them, Ellen and Jo as part of the fight and Castiel swooping in to save the day. Hell, he wanted Mom and Dad arguing about who should be doing the dishes.

Dean scrubbed his hand over his face. “I don’t know, man. I’m just tired. We’re both alive right now, can’t we just call it good for tonight?”

Sam grimaced and Dean knew it was too much to ask for Sam to let this go. But at the least he wanted Sam to stop worrying that he was going to drop dead at any second. They’d probably get a warning first.

“You know I haven’t exactly been rocking the good night sleep. I just got some catching up to do.” Dean walked back over to the table and flipped closed the book Sam was studying. “We both do.”

Sam opened the book again without looking up at Dean. “I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

“Yeah, sure you will.”

He didn’t doubt that Sam would come up to the bedroom soon, just that Sam would sleep when he got there.

Dean found it harder to pretend that everything was okay as he made his way up the stairs. Hauling ass up multiple flights could get his heart racing and calves burning as much as the next guy, but this wasn’t a skyscraper he was summiting. He was just heading up one straight staircase and it wasn’t easy.

His heart pounded in his chest, his legs felt heavy and his arms didn’t feel like they’d be strong enough to support him on the railing if his feet were to falter. He didn’t know what the deal was, but it wasn’t like he was going to call for Sam to walk him up the stairs. If he couldn’t make it to bed on his own it was just time to shoot himself.

Dean lowered his head and focused on the next step before even looking at the one after that. Soon enough he was at the top of the stairs, but the amount of struggle it had taken didn’t make it feel like a victory. He just felt more useless than ever.

He threw off his jacket and reached back to rub his knotted shoulders. All his muscles ached with an exhaustion that was ridiculous given that he’d done all of nothing for the last twelve hours.

Until today, Dean hadn’t remembered what it felt like to be warm, let alone hot and now it felt like it was a million degrees in here. It made him want to collapse all the more.

Dean walked straight for the bed. His overshirt was stripped off and tossed in the general direction of the corner chair. As he walked, he unbuckled his jeans, shoved them down and shuffled as they tangled around his ankles, fumbling to lean against the wall long enough to jerk off his boots and let them fall heavily to the floor. The hem of his t-shirt made it halfway up his midsection before he froze.

A flicker of light pulled his attention. The grungy cotton fell free from his fingers.

Just out of the corner of his eyes, he caught a glimpse of someone standing in the doorway. When he turned to look, instead of confirming it was just a trick of the light, his eyes focused on a woman casually dressed in jeans and a flannel. 

Her hands were set on her hips, her entire stance marked with determination. Dean’s racing heart skipped a beat when he saw her face.

Ellen eyed him with the evaluating stare only a mother could pull off. It was simultaneously worried, chastising and warm. It was one of those looks that made Dean instantly feel four years old again and not in a bad way.

The comfort was short lived as the weight of Ellen’s image piled down on him. Sam could spew all the false comfort he wanted. It would never change the facts. 

Ellen and Jo were dead because of Dean.

On the day the hellhound had taken Jo, Dean had thought he’d been ensuring the safety of the others by keeping to the back of the pack. He’d known Meg had been under orders, wouldn’t have let the hellhounds gut him, but Jo had been expendable in Lucifer’s eyes. Dean had been too slow, too distracted to state the obvious.

He should have warned her. He should have got up faster. He should have done something aside from stare in shock and pull her into his arms too late to do anything but a mercy kill.

Dean still remembered the tableau after Jo’s hand pulled away to reveal her mangled guts seeping onto the filthy hardware store floor. Jo had already known and, at that moment, Dean had too, but Ellen and Sam had looked to him, shocked and desperate. Ellen’s eyes had been pleading.

They’d looked at him like he should have been able to do something and he knew he should have. Anything but what they had done.

He remembered the weight of the nails in his hands, gripping them hard enough that the tips bit into his palm. The electric wires sliding too easily between fingers wet with Jo’s blood and emotions too suffocating to feel anything at all.

He’d heard his father’s voice in his head. Just do, just act. Just shut up and get the damn job done.

Then Ellen said she was staying and Sam had looked to him with those eyes that knew all too well the outcome, but begged for Dean to fix it, to make it better.

He’d seen Sam, six years old, standing on the side of an empty road in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. His lip was trembling and his eyes held back tears as he stared up at Dean. 

Sam had always wanted a dog and they’d found one that had been hit by a car and left for dead. It had still been alive, just barely. 

It had been split open bleeding out over the road and whimpering as Sam petted it, nuzzling into his hand. Sam hadn’t gotten that they couldn’t just stuff everything back inside and stitch it up like Dean had done with his teddy bear.

Dean had told Sam to run back to the motel and said he’d meet him there after he’d found someone to make the dog better. He waited until he was sure Sam had gone before his shaking hands had pulled out a gun he wasn’t supposed to be carrying and done what he’d known he had to.

He’d never been able to go animal hunting with Bobby without seeing that damn dog. He’d never been able to pull the trigger on anything cute and fuzzy because all he could see was his little brother choking back a sob.

And when Ellen had said she was staying with Jo, Dean had wanted more than anything to make her go for Sam and Jo. Unlike Sam though, Dean had known there was no point in trying because Ellen would have never left her daughter. Mom never would’ve left them if she’d had the choice.

He thought of Dad and the crap mobile home in the desert outside Tucson that he’d rigged under Dad’s instructions. They’d used so much propane the thing had gone off like the grand finale on the 4th of July.

There’d been a massive ball of flames, billowing black smoke, heat hot enough to fire back up the cooling evening air and a shockwave that had resonated through his body. He’d been seventeen and the explosion had officially rated as the most awesome thing ever.

Now, he couldn’t even watch action movies without seeing the glass blasting out of that hardware store window and thinking about how all that damn shrapnel had shredded Jo and Ellen’s bodies.

Dean wondered if Dad would have ever taught him how to make bombs if he’d known what Dean would eventually do with those skills.

Jo had been good as dead, part of Dean could let himself admit that three years after the fact, but Ellen hadn’t had to die. She’d been fine when they’d left her. Just like Mom had been fine last time Dean had seen her.

When Dean’s mind returned to the room, he looked back and found the doorway empty with only a darkened hallway beyond. A different uneasiness settled over him.

Sam had been right. He was hallucinating.

Dean shook his head, tried to think. Tried to breathe. He laced his hands behind his head, paced across the room. His sock snagged on a splintered floorboard as he spun around.

“Your muscles stiff?” Sam asked.

''No."

Dean’s reply was automatic. He’d been caught too off guard to even know what the question was. He could barely remember where he was. After a few deep breaths, his guards were back.

“What?” Dean asked.

“Do your muscles ache?”

Dean rolled his shoulders and reconsidered his answer. "Yeah…I guess. It's just all this sitting around on my ass.”

He jerked off his t-shirt as he walked past Sam. He didn’t give his brother a second glance before he flopped down onto the bed that Sam had apparently felt the need to make this afternoon. He sprawled over the moth-eaten covers, eyelids already drooping when cool fingers pressed firmly against his neck.

In one swift motion, Dean flipped over and grabbed the wrist of the offending hand. He glared when he saw his brother still hovering over him.

“Dude! What the hell? Keep your hands to yourself.”

"Your heart's racing," Sam said.

Dean hadn't realized that it was. He’d become too engulfed by the sharp edge of anxiety he was struggling to keep in check. It wasn't a new sensation. He'd lived most his life on the verge of a panic attack. Being on the edge was how he'd managed to live this long.

"All this waiting around to see if I’m gonna drop dead’s just got me edgy.”

It was more than that. His chest hurt, an iron grip was squeezing over his heart and shortening his breath. But he'd be damned if he was about to give Sam a whole lot more of nothing to worry about.

Dean squirmed to pull the covers from beneath him just to find something to put between him and Sam. After only a few seconds, it became too sweltering and he kicked them off.

He rolled onto his side, facing away from Sam, pretending his brother wasn't still perched on the edge of the bed like Mom had always been when he’d been sick.

Dean settled onto his stomach, wrapped his arm around the pillow and turned to bury his face in it. If Sam wanted to spend all night staring at Dean’s boxers, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

His eyes didn’t make it closed before another flickering glow tugged at the edge of his vision.

Ellen stood over him, but looking past him. Her mouth was moving, but her words were silent. His breath held still in his chest and he repositioned his head on his pillow as his ears strained to hear. They found only the wind beating the shutters and his own blood pounding.

He looked over his shoulder to see Sam still just staring at him, idly nodding to himself. Dean gripped the pillow harder before flipping onto his back again. His eyes darted to the side of the bed. He found himself staring only at peeling wallpaper.

His gaze shifted to stare up at the exposed beams of the ceiling. He took one breath and then another until he thought he could trust his voice.

“Sammy?”

His brother’s head jerked up, eyes instantly on him. “Yeah, Dean?”

“Uh...let’s say I was seeing things...would it mean something?”

Sam stepped closer, watching Dean before he clenched his jaw, nodded and looked away. A careful sigh and Sam looked back down at him.

“What are you seeing?”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s nothing you didn’t put in my head, but she can’t really be here.”

“Maybe it’s nothing. You’re way beyond exhausted, Dean. I’d be seeing all kinds of crap too. I’ll do some more reading and...let’s just see how you’re feeling in the morning.”

Dean sucked in a sharp breath. “Yeah, okay.”

It didn’t take full on looking at Sam to know that his brother was spewing a bunch of shit. He could hear it in the tightness of Sam’s tone, the way his entire body had gone rigid and he wouldn’t stop looking at Dean, but also wouldn’t meet his eyes.

It didn’t take Sam saying it for Dean to know that how he was feeling right now was probably as good as it was going to get.

~~~

Kathy was drop dead gorgeous. 

There was a spunky twinkle in her eyes as she stood leaning against the porch railing. The sun caught the auburn streaks in her hair as she flipped it back over her shoulder. She had curves in all the right places, a laugh Dean could listen to all day and a sense of humor that would’ve made him laugh too, in a different life.

As it was, he wanted to be anywhere but here and Kathy was just one more thing he couldn’t or maybe just shouldn’t have. 

She was flirting enough that he knew she would jump at an offer for beers, probably more than that. She was free, new to the area and he wasn’t staying so there was no threat of morning after awkward.

It’d be a dream come true if Dean could think of anything other than Dick.

They should be hunting the leviathans and finding a way to outsmart those gloating bastards. Someone had to clean up Cas’s mess and he owed Bobby Dick’s head on a silver platter sunk somewhere at the bottom of the ocean.

One fucking stray bullet. 

It was one straw too many and if Cas had been there, he could have fixed it. If Cas hadn’t been playing God they wouldn’t be dealing with this black ooze at all.

“Dean, are you even listening?”

“Of course I’m listening.” 

Kathy was no longer standing in front of them so Dean must have legitimately checked out at some point, but it wasn’t like he was about to admit that to his glaring brother.

“You just wanna remind me why we’re wasting time here?” Dean asked.

“So now helping people is wasting time?”

“Helping people, sure. All over that.” Dean gave an agitated sigh and ran his hand through his hair. “There are six billion people waiting around for us to clean up our mess before it eats their asses. But this here isn’t life or death.”

“This thing put Kathy in the hospital.”

“If she just stays off ladders or, better yet, out of the house, then it can’t hurt her. No one should be in this death trap anyway.”

“I know it doesn’t look like much,” Kathy said. 

She came up behind him with several beers in hand. Dean had the decency to look sheepish as he accepted the bottle. Kathy smiled and settled down on the porch swing, looking out towards the old barn. 

“But this place meant the world to my grandparents and before my grandfather passed I swore I’d fix it up. I have old pictures. You wouldn’t believe how beautiful it used be. I think it could be again, but with that...poltergeist I just can’t do the remodels. If you guys have other more important jobs I totally get it, but I’m not gonna let some spook chase me out of my own house.”

“No, you need help with this and we need a break,” Sam told Kathy, though his eyes were on Dean. “Anything for an old friend of Bobby’s.”

Dean shut up and drank his beer at the reminder that Kathy’s father had helped Bobby out of more than a couple of tight spots. He still wasn’t clear how she’d gotten a hold of them given how they were supposedly off the grid, but Sam had immediately latched onto this case and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

His brother was insistent on trying to distract him from the leviathans like he legitimately thought they might just go away. But the longer they held back, the longer they sat on their asses doing nothing, the less their chances of winning this fight. 

They shouldn’t be out here playing ghost hunters, but he respected Kathy’s determination, among other things. As long as they were already out here, they might as well take care of this. 

“You guys have no idea how much this means to me,” she said. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”

She hopped off the swing and left her beer unopened on the porch railing. Dean glanced at it before chugging the last of his and following her inside. 

The place wasn’t as bad as Dean had imagined from the outside. Or maybe his standards had just become that low. He couldn’t see any signs of renovation work, but the place still looked half livable. 

Dean dug out his EMF and flipped on the switch. The thing instantly lit up like a Christmas tree and started humming up a storm. 

“Something’s sure as hell...”

Dean’s words trailed off as the hot spot moved on and the EMF fell silent. An instant later, there was a crash in the kitchen. 

He’d heard the sound enough times before to know it was a plate shattering. Usually poltergeists were more in the mood to empty entire cupboards, not toss individual plates, but it was probably just getting warmed up. 

“Get out of here, Kathy,” Dean said. “We’ll take care of this.”

“It’s not me you should be worried about, handsome.”

There was an edge to her tone that made Dean turn to Sam. His brother wasn’t standing where he had been only a moment earlier. 

Dean spun around to see Kathy with her arm latched around Sam’s chest. It looked ridiculous given how tiny she was compared to Sam, but Dean wasn’t laughing when he saw the glint of a dagger pressed against Sam’s throat. 

“Well, I guess the place really is haunted,” Kathy said with a laugh. “I betcha Crowley will appreciate the irony, don’t you think?”

Her eyes flickered to black just before she jerked Sam back into the kitchen. 

~~~

Dean jerked awake, on edge and ready to fight. 

He automatically dug beneath his pillow for the calming handle of a dagger or cold steel of his pistol. There was nothing but the coolness of sheets and an empty, naked feeling dredged up in his stomach.

His mind screamed the familiar mantra. Protect Sammy. 

He jumped up, only then realizing he was in a bed. His chest continued to heave as he sat on the mattress. Alone in the quiet room, his breath sounded loud, his blood pounded in his ears. 

The blinds were down over the windows, but enough light seeped through to tell him he’d been sleeping for far too long. Dean stumbled from the bed, nearly hitting the floor in a tangle of sweaty sheets. 

He just needed his feet beneath him, a weapon in his hand. He’d have to start with getting air into his lungs and his eyes to focus. His ears strained to hear the threat his senses screamed was encroaching.

Voices filtered up the stairs. Dean crept to the doorway, easing slightly at the sound of Sam’s relatively calm voice.

As he forced his breath steady, Dean stood in his boxers and ran a thoughtless hand through his rumpled hair. His brow furrowed when his ears keyed in on a second voice. He didn’t bother wondering why Sam had the phone set to speaker, too drawn to the other person.

He hustled over to grab his jeans, sloppily pulling them on and grabbing his t-shirt. His footsteps remained light and he left his boots off so he could make it to the top of the staircase without Sam hearing and hanging up the phone.

“It sounds like just a bunch of folklore,” Sam said. “We can’t just start injecting him with random venom and see if it makes him better or kills him. Yeah, I know he’s already dying, Bobby—”

Dean pulled his hand away from the stair railing when it creaked under the pressure of him resting against it. He heard Sam’s footsteps hurry from the kitchen and a moment later, his brother was at the bottom of the stairs staring up at him.

Even though he knew Sam was fine, he still breathed a sigh of relief seeing him stand there without a demon latched onto him. 

“Dean? What’re you doing up?”

“Who’re you talking to?” 

“Jody. She was just helping me go through some of Bobby’s old books.”

Sam’s face said he was lying and more than that his eyes said Dean didn’t want to know. And maybe he didn’t. He was tired of having to play detective just to talk to his brother. 

“Come on down,” Sam said when the silence had stretched too long. “I’ll make you breakfast.”

“No you won’t.” Dean remembered last night’s dinner then rethought his answer. “I’m not eating any of your granola crap, but do you got any more recipes like that gravy hidden up your sleeve?” 

Dean continued talking as he walked down the stairs to distract Sam from his unsteady steps. His hands gripped the railing just in case. 

“Dude, seriously, almost thirty years of crap junk food and greasy takeout and you never once thought to mention you could cook?” Dean asked.

He followed Sam into the kitchen, hesitating a moment beside the broken door. A nearly overwhelming sensation of dread washed over him. He kept close to his brother’s side until he was relatively sure there was nothing to jump out at them. 

“French toast?” Sam asked.

Dean jumped at the words before he really heard them. He shot Sam a doubtful look. “You bought eggs? Were you replaced by the Paula Deen of leviathans? Come on, man. Seriously? The last time you cracked an egg I nearly broke a tooth.”

Dean took the cup of coffee that Sam offered him. He took in a deep breath of the earthy coffee aroma and the house in general. 

For some place that had obviously been vacant so long, it really wasn’t half bad. It didn’t smell like sewage, wasn’t covered in toxic mold and so far he’d only seen a few rats. By their current standards, it was paradise.

“So how’re you feeling?” Sam asked.

Dean shrugged as he walked over to the window. He looked past the dusty, woven white curtains to the fields that seemed to stretch endlessly around the house. The sky over the grasses was bright, full of wispy clouds with heavier ones gathering on the horizon.

It was the first time he’d seen the back field in the light, but some part of his mind recognized every detail. All but one.

His eyes settled on a raised mound of soil. It was old enough to have settled, but fresh enough to have only sparse patches of weeds on top with grasses starting to creep up the edges.

Dean rubbed at the bandage on his neck and tilted his head. “We were here a couple months ago?”

“Uh...yeah,” Sam said. “Why?”

“Was there a grave here?”

Sam barely looked out the window and didn’t get a chance to answer before the coffee cup slipped from Dean’s suddenly limp hand. The ceramic shattered across the floor. 

Dean fell forward, gripping the sink in front of him as a piercing shock of pain shot through his nerves and seized his back. He coughed, choking on the coffee that had been in his mouth.

His head jerked up when he heard a voice, barely distinguishable. “Okay” and “kid” were the only words he could grasp through the pain and the confusion of trying to place the voice.

When he could move again, he went to take a step back only to be blocked by something solid as a brick wall and cold as ice. He turned around, ready for combat, but nothing was there and the only thing the blockade had done was stop him from slicing his bare feet open on the shattered pieces of the mug.

Sam gripped his arm and directed Dean around the shattered cup. He lowered him into a chair, keeping him upright until he could sit on his own. 

“What was that?” Dean asked when he again had enough breath to speak.

“It’s probably one of the venoms. Some neurotoxins—”

“Not that. What caught me?”

Sam crouched down beside Dean, looking at him like he was a toddler. There was an annoying amount of patience in his eyes as Sam was no doubt struggling to choose his words carefully. Dean would’ve punched him if he didn’t need the grounding touch of Sam’s hand on his knee. 

“Sammy…” Dean swiped a hand over his eyes. “I’m losing it, man.”

Sam looked away, staring off at the other side of the room before shaking his head. “No, you’re not, Dean.”

He couldn’t summon up a protest before a second wave of pain hit. Fire coursed through Dean’s veins and he slumped in the chair. 

On the edge of consciousness, he felt two cold sets of hands grasp him as he was lowered to the floor.


	5. Chapter 5

At some point, Dean had ended up back on the couch. It was cracked leather. Usually he found leather comforting. The smell was safety and home. It was Dad and the Impala and everything he needed.

This morning it accosted his nostrils, raising memories of overdone jerky. Not the beef kind, but the kind demons made from meat carved off the ribs of gutted souls.

From the pain in his side, he was pretty sure it was his own ribs again. His heart beat like he’d been running a marathon, but as far as he knew he was pretty sure he’d been lying on the couch for the better part of the morning.

Sam had given him some books so he could pretend he was helping with research, but most of them remained untouched on the floor. The one that he’d passed out holding had slipped from his chest and was on the verge of joining the rest.

His breath caught in his throat at the sound of a rumbled growl and the scent of musty death steeped in blood. Table legs screeched over the floor as something pushed past the table in the kitchen. 

He could hear the hellhounds’ pants and feel their rancid breath against his ear. His eyes darted to the side. Nothing was there.

Dean took another breath and kicked up his legs. They crossed at the ankles as he propped his bare feet up on the armrest. He still hadn’t gotten around to putting on his boots.

He shouldn’t be so complacent. He had to be ready to fight or run at a moment’s notice, but his boots were all the way upstairs. Instead of getting them, he drew up his knees.

Dean tucked his chilled feet beneath the throw pillow on the other side of the couch as he adjusted the flat pillow behind his head. He propped the heavy book up against his thighs and opened it to a random page.

It took him a solid thirty seconds of staring at the text to realize it wasn’t in English. The weight of the book on his stomach was making it ache more anyway. He slammed it closed and tossed it down to the floor.

There was another rabid bark from the kitchen. The sound was as real as his own pounding heart. There was no way he’d imagined that one.

Sam was in the kitchen.

That thought spurred Dean into action. He jumped from the couch as the kitchen door slammed closed. By the time he reached the door he had the demon knife in hand. Even as his fingers gripped the hilt, he wasn’t sure where it had come from. He’d forgotten that it had been missing. 

Beyond the windows, the skies shifted. Light clouds turned dark and rain beat against the glass. The distant roll of thunder was background to Dean’s fist pounding against the kitchen door. 

He couldn’t make out what the voices behind it were saying. He didn’t care as words were replaced with the thuds of boots and fists beating against flesh. 

Dean drove his shoulder into the hardwood that separated him from his brother. He threw all his weight into it and the door broke free, smashing against the kitchen wall. 

Two demons held Sam, wrenching his shoulders back until he bit back a cry. His nose was already broken, blood dripping down his face to stain his jacket red. He was doubled over gasping. 

“Get your damn hands off him!” 

Dean was rushing the demons before he’d finished the sentence. He didn’t make it to them before he was thrown back and pinned against the wall. 

Kathy sauntered around the table towards him. Her smile was wicked as she pressed her body against his. She ran her hand up his thigh, stopping to grip the crotch of his jeans until she forced a moan. 

“I saw the way you were looking at her. I know you’d love to take this body for a ride,” she said. “Maybe we could make a deal.”

Her voice was hot against his ear. With the little movement he could manage, he pulled his head back and butted his forehead into hers. She smiled before backhanding him hard enough his vision waivered.

When he could focus his eyes again, he felt her hand around his wrists. She twisted until his fingers were forced to release the dagger. 

“You really like this thing don’t you?” she asked as she traced the edge down his sternum. “Well, here’s the thing boys, you’ve graduated to Crowley’s couldn’t give two shits list. It’s open season so I figure it’s time to be putting this thing to good use.”

She reared the knife back. Sam’s hollered threats echoed though the kitchen as Dean prepared himself for an impact he couldn’t avoid. His eyes were locked with Sam’s when she stabbed the dagger into the wall two inches from Dean’s head. 

Kathy’s lips brushed against his as she whispered, “You’re gonna wish I’d done it.” 

Her hold on him released and Dean collapsed. The falling sensation ended with him hitting the floor. He grunted at the impact that shocked him awake.

He road out the pain that shot through his back before he opened his eyes to find himself stuck between the couch and coffee table with a lumpy pile of books beneath him.

He cursed as he pushed up to a sitting position and found Sam already hovering over him. For once, it was a relief. Dean drank in the sight of Sam blood free until the relief had subsided enough that his pride kicked in. 

“Not a word,” Dean warned.

“Are you all right?”

“Don’t you ever get tired of asking the same stupid question?”

Dean rubbed a sore spot at the back of his head. He used the coffee table to get himself back up onto the couch before really taking in the fact that none of this was Sam’s fault.

“Sorry.”

“You’re gonna hurt yourself,” Sam said. “You should be sleeping in the bed.” 

“I take it back. I’m not sorry. I don’t want to lie down. Didn’t I tell you to shut up about it?”

“Dean, if I knew what you were seeing...”

“You couldn’t do anymore than you are now.”

Dean wiped the cold sweat from his brow and sat up on the couch. He was thirsty enough that he didn’t even gripe when Sam snatched away the flask and replaced it with a glass of water.

He tried to hide the unsteadiness in his hands as he set the glass to his lips. After a few good gulps, he put it down on the coffee table and looked back up to his brother while still keeping an ear towards the kitchen.

“Did Sherriff Mills find anything in the books?” Dean asked.

“Not yet, but I’m working with an expert online to get all the specimens from the house identified.”

“You sent someone back to the house?”

Dean didn’t bother to keep the disapproval from his voice. The witch’s place was a death trap from floor to ceiling without the poisonous bugs, black magic and leviathans. He wasn’t sure what part of not wanting anyone else to die for him Sam was missing.

“Jody called the local authorities. I know it wasn’t safe, but it was the only option we had and it would’ve been way worse to leave them for some kids to find.”

As much as he wanted to, Dean couldn’t actually argue with that. “Did they find anything to help those two in the hospital?”

The long gap of silence before Sam spoke told Dean what his brother was going to say before he said it. Dean’s fingers were already digging into his knees by the time the words came.

“They didn’t make it. One of them died last night, the other this morning.”

“So no survivors?”

“Not yet.”

There was another thing that Sam wasn’t getting. It wasn’t himself that Dean had been worried about. Sure, he wasn’t looking forward to drawing out another living hell, but he’d been living on borrowed time for years and it wasn’t a gift.

“This wasn’t your fault, Dean.”

On second thought, Sam did know him pretty damn well. Technically, Sam was right. Dean hadn’t pulled the trigger, but he sure as hell hadn’t stopped it either.

“We’re taking these leviathans out,” Dean said. “One by one. Every last one of these fuckers. That is, if I make it through the night.”

“You will. I got someone at the Oklahoma exotic antivenin hotline tracking down sources. Some they already have in Kentucky and the zoos have some others. We just have to hope we’re right on the IDs.”

“But that won’t fix me, right?” Dean asked. “Not until we can clean the goo out.”

“No. But it’ll buy us enough time to break the curse.”

“The unbreakable one?” Dean rubbed at his shoulder as a spike of pain shot through it. “I heard you on the phone.”

“When?”

“This morning when you said you knew I was dying.”

Sam came over and sat down on the couch beside Dean, close enough for their knees to touch. “That’s just if we don’t stop it.”

“Exactly. If we sit around waiting instead of acting. What about the venom?”

“Treating the venom is what we’re doing.”

“But you said it yourself, treating the venom will only stop the symptoms,” Dean said. “I know Sherriff Mills found the same thing you did about the venoms canceling each other out.”

“It’s just folklore.”

Dean slammed his hand down on the armrest. “Oh, come on, Sam! We’ve spent our entire lives following random ass folklore. I say let’s try it. We got nothing to lose.”

“It’ll kill you.”

“This is killing me,” Dean said as he pointed to himself. “I’m not gonna sit around waiting for the axe to fall. Let’s just get it over with or move on.”

“You’re talking about your life, Dean.”

“I’ve already died. A lot. I don’t wanna leave you alone in this craphole and I don’t want to go back to hell, but if I’m going anyway it’s not gonna be in a bed too lost in crazyville to even remember who you are. You’re the only reason this life isn’t shit.”

Sam clenched his jaw and nodded. His eyes said far more than any words could. Dean met his gaze long enough to also silently convey what he sucked at saying aloud. 

He wouldn’t leave Sam alone if the choice was his.

“I know,” Sam said and Dean knew he did. “If we run out of other options, we’ll look at it, but were not there yet. We still got time and things we haven’t tried.”

Dean didn’t have to ask to know one of the thoughts Sam was considering. “Cas is crazier than I am and not holding it together half as well as you did. He isn’t gonna fly in waving a magic wand.”

“I know he screwed up, Dean, almost as much as I have, but don’t count him out just yet.”

“Don’t you dare call Meg. The last thing I need is her gloating ass smiling down on my deathbed.” Dean fell silent as another thought came to his mind. “Don’t tell me you still pray.”

Sam’s eyes locked back with Dean’s. “I’m not ruling anyone out.”

“I really am fucked. Tell me you at least got a better plan than asking pretty please of the big guy who didn’t give a crap about the apocalypse.”

“Yeah, I do. It’s dangerous, but it’s the best I can come up with short of outright killing you.”

“Now we’re talking.” Dean clapped Sam on the back and forced a smirk. “Sign me up.”

~~~

The blast ripped through the air.

It was distant, but reassuring. It was the sound of a .22 gauge shotgun tearing through its target.

He’d started shooting shotguns as soon as he’d been big enough to hold one. It was one of the first weapons Dad had trained him with. Knives were lighter and didn’t have a kick, but meant getting in close and having to be tall enough to be able to stab someone in the heart or slit their throat.

Guns were safe. They could be used from a defensible location or on the run. Their weight was solid and reassuring. His first shotgun had had been his version of a security blanket.

Aside from Sammy, it had been one of the first things Dad had given him after the fire that had meant anything.

It was Dad’s approval. It was something Dean could do. Finally something he could use to fight back against a world that just kept taking everything away.

A shotgun wouldn’t stop the hellhounds, but it would slow them down.

The next one came skittered around the corner, claws gouging the wood boards. Dean didn’t hesitate to take a shot that knocked it back with a blood-curdling yelp.

He prepared to take another shot, but something caught the end of the barrel, forcing it down. Dean kicked out against the invisible threat.

“Dean!” Sam’s desperate shout broke through Dean’s blind struggle. “What’re you doing?”

His eyes flew open to find his brother standing over him. Sam’s expression was filled with shocked concern. All Dean wondered was why Sam was just standing there even as he realized the howling had gone silent.

“Why do you have a gun?” Sam asked. 

It was a stupid question. Dean always had a gun.

He opened his mouth to tell his brother off when he felt his finger tense around a trigger. The gun was braced against his shoulder, hammer cocked back and his brother standing on the other end of the barrel, directing it down towards the ground. 

Sam tried to take the salt-loaded sawed off from his hands. Dean jerked it back, clutching the weapon to his chest. He didn’t remember why, but he needed it.

“You gotta give me the gun, Dean.”

“No, I don’t. It’s my gun. Stop talking to me like I’m five.”

“You shot the wall full of salt rounds.”

Dean’s sweaty grip remained tight as he followed Sam’s eyes to the wallpaper on the far side of the room. It was now riddled with small holes.

His grip on the gun went limp, but he didn’t surrender it. It took a couple of gulps of whisky before Dean let himself look around the room. He tucked the gun beneath his arm and set down the flask.

“What were you shooting?” Sam asked.

“Apparently just the ugly damn wallpaper.”

As he searched his mind, he remembered. He didn’t honestly know whether or not the hellhounds had been real, but what he’d heard had been. 

They’d come when Sam had gone.

He’d heard clanking and clattering and the rustling of book pages. Best case scenario, that poltergeist hunt obviously wasn’t as finished as Sam had thought.

“Something’s in the kitchen,” Dean said.

He wanted to punch his brother when Sam gave him a sympathetic look instead of offering to help him check it out. Dean had seen a few things that weren’t there while Sam had been out, but a couple delusions didn’t mean all his senses were shot.

“I just came from the kitchen. I’ve been here the whole time going through the books.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure, Dean.”

Every nerve in Dean’s body still tingled with the certainty that something was here, but without evidence he didn’t even believe himself. He’d have to default to Sam’s judgment. 

“Haven’t you read all those books yet?”

“We’re still looking for something that’s going to work,” Sam said.

“No, you’re looking. I’m shooting my imaginary friends.” 

Dean forced himself to relax back into the chair. He’d given up on the couch. The leather was getting to him and it was too much like lying around in bed. At least sitting up made him feel slightly less like an invalid.

“Do you remember your imaginary friend?” Dean asked.

“Um…I don’t know, Dean. What does this have to do with—?”

“Toby…or some equally douchey name,” Dean continued. “You were like three and you were so fucking happy that you’d actually made a friend. Dad wasn’t exactly big on the socialization back then. I don’t think you’d ever even met anyone your own age.”

Sam settled down on the edge of the couch. “Okay...and?”

“You were so excited that Toby said he was coming with us. Then Dad torched his corpse and you thought he’d gone ‘cause of you. Man, you wouldn’t stop crying. Dad went out and slept in the car and...I’m sorry, Sammy.”

“Because Dad took out my imaginary friend or because he couldn’t deal with his own son?” Sam quickly caught his own slip of the tongue. “Dean, I don’t even remember.”

“I know. But I do.” He didn’t know how to apologize for all of it. It wouldn’t change anything if he could. “And I...I just wish it could’ve been different.”

“With Toby?”

“All of it.” Dean cleared his throat. “Forget it.”

Deep red arterial blood again seeped down Sam’s jacket, leaking out from an unseen wound. Dean looked away. He counted to ten and looked back. Sam sat there tilting his head in concern. The blood was gone.

“But Toby was real and...” Dean said as he looked between the gun on his lap and the holes in the wall. “These things I’m seeing...they’re not.”

“Like Lucifer.”

“Right. I stuck you with that too and I got no clue how you even stayed breathing through it. These dreams, this stuff I’m seeing, it looks and feels as real as you and me sitting here. How am I supposed to know when they’re really coming?”

“No one’s coming, Dean.”

“No, they’re not,” Dean agreed. “No one’s coming and I could’ve just shot you.”

“You didn’t, but I guess it’d be fair if you did. It’s not like I’ve never shot you full of salt.”

“Or lead.” Dean’s lips hinted at a wry smirk. “Now that you mention it, I do owe you a few.”

Dean rubbed his throbbing temples. The pain in his head just kept drumming. At least it was pushing the constant nausea to the background.

“How’s the pain?” Sam asked.

“There.”

“We’re going to figure this out, Dean. You’ve been in hell of a lot worse spots than this, but for now you need to give me the gun.”

“You can’t take a joke?” Dean tightened his grip on the weapon. “I promise I won’t actually shoot you.”

“I know, but you could end up shooting yourself.”

Dean shrugged. “It wouldn’t put us any worse off than we are now.”

Sam glared, but Dean wasn’t about to change his mind. He couldn’t stop what was happening inside of him and maybe he couldn’t decide how it ended, but he could go down with a gun in his hands.

“I still don’t like this, but while you were out we did get the antivenins. We got what we could for the species they found in the house, but without knowing which ones...”

“Sammy, I gotta do something.” Dean looked down at the gun and ran his hand over the wood of the handle. “I can’t even hold a gun right.”

“Why not?”

“My coordination’s just shot. It’s hard to move. I can’t even walk up those damn stairs without feeling like I’m about to drop. Why do you think I’ve just been sitting here?”

“Dean...” Sam’s eyes drifted up towards the ceiling as he shook his head. “I just thought you were tired.”

“I am. So either you tell me there’s a cure or we’re leaving. I’ll patch up that damn car the best I can and I’m taking the first shot I can get off at Dick however I can get it. I’m not dying sitting on my ass in this house.”

“The best plan we got right now is to pick one of the antivenins and go from there, but we’ll only be guessing and whether or not it helps, it’s pretty definitely going to make you sick. You could have an allergic reaction, fever, weakness…”

“You sound like a damn drug commercial.”

Sam shot Dean a disapproving look as he stood. “If anything goes wrong, there’s nothing we can do for you here.”

“Nothing anyone else can do either.” Dean ran his tongue over his lips before looking up to Sam. “Will it stop the...you know...the rest of it?”

“Not unless the hallucinations are being caused by one of the venoms or the folklore is right and antivenin is enough to trigger a cancellation in the venoms.”

“But maybe?”

“I don’t know, Dean. Maybe.”

“Let’s just do it.”

Sam disappeared for a minute before coming back with a small vile and syringe. Dean shrugged off his jacket just enough to pull out of one sleeve and fumbled to unfasten the button at the cuff of his flannel.

After the third try he decided it would be easier to just take the shirt off, but Sam set his hand over Dean’s.

“Let me get it.”

Dean gave a huff of frustration, but nodded. He leaned back in the chair and let Sam unfasten the cuff before rolling it up his arm. A chill settled over him as he rested his exposed forearm on the worn armrest.

He watched Sam fill the syringe. His brother was uneasy and doing a piss poor job of hiding it.

“This is my call,” Dean said. “Whatever happens isn’t on you.”

“It’s not all on you, Dean. It never has been.”

Sam slid the needle beneath his skin before Dean could argue. He hissed, shifting in the chair. It hurt a lot more than it should. Everything seemed to.

“That’s it,” Sam said. “Now we’ll just wait and see and try another one in a little while.”

Dean slapped Sam’s hand away when his brother tried to re-dress him. He jerked the flannel sleeve down on his own and didn’t bother trying to button the cuff again before slipping back into his jacket.

“I can’t believe this place doesn’t have a television,” Dean grumbled as he reached for the flask. He narrowed his eyes as Sam blocked him. “Dude, don’t even think about it.”

“There’s no way you’re drinking while we’re trying to determine side effects. You can have water or you can forget it.”

“I need something to take the edge off.”

“No, Dean, Dad needed it. You just think you do because he did. You can get mad at me all you want for saying it, but you’re better than Dad. You always have been.”

~~~

Dean leaned over the dining room table, barely holding himself up with his elbows. His head hung low and his shoulders were slumped. He couldn’t even see the room around him.

All he could see was Sam tumbling backwards into that screaming abyss.

Dean had just sat there on his ass and watched his little brother jump into hell. He should have stopped him. It was Dean who had broken the first seal. He’d brought on the apocalypse. It shouldn’t be Sam and Adam in that cage.

At the least, he should have jumped in after them. An eternity of torment in Lucifer’s cage at his brother side would be far better than this.

He shook the last drops from the glass in his hand. Blindly he reached for the next shot. His hand came up empty. The bottle he’d had sitting on the table beside him was gone.

It took a minute for his mind to catch up. Finally, his bleary eyes lifted from the polished wood and looked up to see a beautiful woman, tough as nails. She had a stern hand on her hip, the other hand holding his bottle.

Ben’s homework lay forgotten on the table. The kid was busy studying Dean with a concentration he didn’t deserve. He looked between his mom and Dean like he was waiting to see who was going to break first.

Lisa sure as hell better hope she was wrong about Dean being a role model for Ben. He wasn’t even fit to be around people, let alone impressionable youth.

Dean knew he should just walk out and not just from the fight he wanted to have, but from all this. He didn’t deserve them and they deserved far better than him. But he’d already slipped past the end of his rope. He was free falling and drowning and so far past giving a shit that it was a wonder he was still breathing.

“Knock it off, Lisa.”

He tried to force his voice calm. Instead, it only sounded strained and dead, even to his own ears. There was anger he couldn’t choke down.

The hate and desperation strangling him just below the surface ran far darker and deeper than anything to do with Lisa or a stupid bottle. It was hate for himself and what he’d failed to do. 

Lisa couldn’t fix him. No one could.

“You’ve had enough,” Lisa said.

They were words Sam had said far too many times. She didn’t have the right. At least Sam had known what he needed. Lisa couldn’t know. He didn’t want her to.

“Just give it back.”

Warning edged Dean’s tone. He didn’t mean for it to be there. He didn’t mean for any of this, but he wasn’t strong enough to stop it.

“No. My house, my rules. You’re cut off.”

“Lisa...”

“I get that you need something, Dean, but this isn’t it,” Lisa said with a shake of the half empty bottle. “You are not drinking yourself into liver failure in front of my son.”

“Then I’ll go outside.”

Dean stood or at least tried to. His feet were unsteady beneath him, the floor bobbing as he took a step. He steadied himself on the table then held out his hand for Lisa to give him the bottle.

Instead of handing it over, she strutted into the kitchen and shoved it into the cupboard. She shut the door soundly behind it and shot Dean a challenging look.

“That’s enough!” Dean knocked the glass from the table, sending it shattering against the floor. “You got no damn business telling me what I need!” 

Everyone froze where they were. Dean’s heaving breaths were the only sound in the impossibly silent kitchen. His fingers curled into fists, nails biting into his palms.

“You don’t...you can’t...”

He couldn’t form a sentence or even decipher his own thoughts as his eyes locked with Ben’s. The kid stared at him wide-eyed, his mouth hanging open and his hands gripping the edge of the table.

In the background, he heard Lisa telling Ben to go up to his room. In the foreground, he heard his father’s growling voice.

Heavy boots stomped towards him. Glass shards crunched beneath them. A hand gripped his shoulder, squeezing so hard Dean hissed, shrinking back from the pain. He felt microscopic in the shadow of his father looming over him.

“You don’t ever tell me what to do!” Dad spat down at him. “Damn it, Dean! Where did you hide that bottle?”

Dean just shook his head, knowing Dad wouldn’t hear whatever explanation he tried to give.

He was shoved back against the kitchen counter. He didn’t try to slip away, just stared down at the linoleum and accepted whatever was coming.

Dad scared Sammy when he got like this. Dean knew he didn’t mean to, but he didn’t understand why Dad drank so much when it just made him angrier.

“If you drank it…”

“No, sir,” Dean quickly said.

He backed tighter against the counter the glass had so easily shattered against. Dean kept his eyes down, careful not to make a challenge. He knew better than to disobey Dad. Orders had to be followed no matter what.

“Then where...?”

“I dumped it.” And with those words, the floodgates opened. “I know you must of saw something bad and I’m sorry, but last time...Sammy’s scared. And I’m worried about you, Dad.”

He stood rigidly, half curled into himself, waiting for Dad to go off on him. But nothing happened. Dean risked a look up at his father.

Dad’s eyes were rimmed with moisture, his fist clenched. His grip on Dean’s shoulder tightened before it suddenly released. Dean wanted to reach up and snag the rough hand. He wanted to ask for the contact back, for Dad to pull him into his arms, but he turned away.

Dad choked an apology that Dean could barely make out before telling him to get to bed. Dean just bit his lip and scrubbed the tears from his eyes.

“It’s okay, Dean.”

Dean’s body shuddered as the gentle hand brush over the stubble of his cheek. Lisa’s fingers lingered there. Her eyes were understanding when they shouldn’t be.

He’d had no right to knock on her door. Not the first, second, third or forth time. Not ever.

Dean turned his head away. He went for the broom to sweep up the glass, but Lisa blocked him against the table. Her lips pressed against his forehead. Dean’s head slumped as he let her pull him forward into her arms.

“Dean?”

Dean jolted up in the chair. The soft glow of the warm dining room was replaced by the coldness of the dilapidated farm house. He blinked away the lingering cobwebs of memory as the living room around him slowly regained familiarity.

His heart still raced in his chest as he leaned back in the musty chair. He let his body sink into the broken springs. He wiped his hand over his face. It came back wet. Quickly, he brought his sleeve up to dry his cheeks.

Sam backed away to give him some room. Dean kept his eyes focused on the floor until his heart slowed. Even then he couldn’t find the words to speak. He was pretty sure he didn’t have to. Sam already knew.

“I want to try giving you something else and...well, you were...”

“Just do it,” Dean interrupted.

This time he didn’t argue as Sam helped him slip out of his jacket. His brother was annoyingly careful as he rolled up Dean’s sleeve. He pressed in the needle and pushed down the plunger. 

Sam set the syringe aside before looking Dean over. “So...how’re you feeling?”

“Like I’m knocking on heaven’s door.”

“Dean this is serious. Randomly injecting you with antivenin...it’s safer than venom, but it’s still not safe.”

Despite everything, Dean laughed. It was just too ridiculous of a statement. Sam looked at him like he’d officially lost his mind. Maybe he had.

“What part of this is funny?”

“Really, Sam? Safe? When have we ever been safe?”

Sam perched on the edge of the coffee table. He wrung his hands together, his thumb rubbing at that damn scar in the palm of his hands. Sam hid behind his bangs before finally looking back up at Dean.

“Have you ever felt safe?” Sam asked.

Dean stared at his brother and tried to make sense of the stupid question. Safe had been stripped away from them when a demon had forced blood down his baby brother’s throat, burned his mother alive and gutted his father’s soul.

Dean bit his lip and stared at his brother’s hands.

“I did,” Sam said. “With you. I know it sucked for you, Dean, and I’m sorry, but you’re the reason I felt safe enough to go to Stanford. I wasn’t scared of the world because you made this unbelievable amount of crap okay. I knew even if I stepped out on a ledge you’d still have my back.”

Too bad he hadn’t.

There was blood on Dean’s hand. He thought he’d look up at Sam and see the blood again covering his brother, but it was only on his own fingers.

Dean followed Sam’s eyes to his forearm. There was blood smeared there. Sam disappeared for a moment before coming back with a wet rag. He wiped Dean’s arm clean before unpeeling a band aid and sticking it over the injection site.

“You really that into playing doctor?”

“Your blood isn’t clotting like it should.” Sam raised Dean’s arm and held pressure over the band aid. “It’s probably one of the venoms, but we gotta be careful.”

“I ain’t gonna bleed out through a pinprick.” Dean glanced at his crimson smeared fingers then back up at his brother, suddenly less certain. “Right?”

“No, it’s not that bad, but if you get hurt…”

“Sitting in this chair?” Dean asked skeptically. “I think I’m safe from battle wounds here.”

~~~

The lights flickered.

This farmhouse was a decrepit rat trap and earlier in the evening he’d established that the wiring was shit. The lights kept dimming, casting shadows just out of the corner of his eyes. Dean knew that not every flash of a bulb was a warning sign, but his nerves were frayed to the point of snapping.

He was seeing things, not just shadows, but people standing there, naked and blood-streaked, innards everywhere. Half the time he blinked and the room was red, bloody handprints smeared over the decaying wallpaper.

The people were staring at him. Judging him. They were familiar, but faceless.

It had taken the better part of the evening to figure out who they were. Once he’d stopped trying to recognize their faces, he’d taken in their wounds. He recognized his own handiwork only because it was a shadow of Alastair’s.

All these tattered souls hadn’t needed to waste the trip up from the pit. He already knew what the verdict was.

Sam had hauled his ass upstairs and into the bed after Dean epically failed at keeping down dinner. His brother was still hovering. Sam didn’t understand how tired he was of being evaluated.

Another cool rag was set against his forehead. Dean sighed and sunk back into his pillow. He pretended to be tired, pretended he could breathe past the heat constricting his lungs.

“I got this,” Dean said, voice tight. “Go get some air. You gotta be tired of babysitting.”

It wasn’t that Dean wanted to be alone with the fake ghosts of souls he’d gutted. As long as Sam was here not noticing them it reassured him they weren’t here, too even though he could see them, smell them and taste their blood splattered over his tongue.

Dean gagged. Sam helped him sit up and held a glass of water to his lips. Dean took a sip then waved Sam off. “Not strong enough.”

“Too bad.” Sam’s tough love act fractured back to concern with a tilt of his head. “What are you looking at?”

Dean swallowed, let his eyes close again. “Nothing anymore.”

“Dean, you don’t have to play it tough. I was the one walking around with Lucifer stuffed up in my melon. I can help.”

“Like I helped you?”

That was just the thing, fake Lucifer had nearly pushed Sam over the edge, nearly killed him God only knew how many times and Dean had done fuck all to help. He’d basically told Sam to close his eyes and count sheep until the devil got tired of slaughtering them all.

Sam had kept it together, all on his own. He didn’t need to listen to Dean crying about things that went away when he closed his eyes, even if other nightmares just took their place. 

“Look, I’m tired and you look like the walking dead. Dude, seriously, go eat something.”

Sam reluctantly took his hand off Dean’s shoulder and helped him lay back down. Dean shifted uncomfortably beneath the covers, rolling on his side to face away from Sam and adjusting the sheets over his hips.

“Okay, Dean. Just get some sleep.”

Dean stared blankly forward at the young woman hanging from the ceiling. He couldn’t hear Sam go over the sound of her wailing. Dean swallowed hard and looked over his shoulder to make sure Sam had gone before letting out a sigh of relief.

Dean didn’t want to be alone, but he didn’t deserve his brother’s coddling. His cheeks were flushed enough with shame without his brother knowing how hard the stripped down souls were making him.

They weren’t a turn on, they made him nauseous. They made him hate himself more than he already did, but the ache in his groin had still stirred to a painful intensity.

He checked again for Sam before slipping his hand beneath the covers and past the band of his boxers. Sweat-slick fingers slid down his tender erection. He groaned, not in pleasure, but discomfort. His features were drawn tight as he tried to hurry things along.

His hips jutted just as the mattress beside him shifted. Dean practically leapt out of his skin, flipping over on the bed and grasping for the last straws of composure. He scrambled for an explanation he didn’t need as he found himself staring up not at Sam.

“Lisa?”

The blood was gone from the paisley wallpaper. Lisa wore her nightgown, his favorite with the strap-sleeve that just never quite wanted to stay on her shoulder. It slid down her arm as she sat on the bed, leaning with her arm propping her up and smiling carefully down at him.

“Hey, you,” she said. “You doing okay?”

Part of him missed this. That look she gave him like he could do no wrong, the way she let him pretend nothing was wrong even when they both knew the truth. It didn’t matter what kind of crap he pulled, she’d just clean up the mess like it had nothing to do with him.

She’d been a cover for Sam, at times even easier to be with because she was something he hadn’t screwed up. Until he did. Unlike Sam, she could only follow him so far and he’d already asked too much.

Lisa was the reason he was still alive. She’d done things no woman should have to do. She’d saved him and he couldn’t protect her or her son.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Dean said.

She didn’t need him, she’d be happy with anyone. She’d just been doing what she’d felt responsible for. He’d been a second kid at best.

“Don’t you start that,” she said as she brushed her bangs aside. “I can be wherever I want and you shouldn’t be alone.”

“I’m not.”

Her hand rested on his freckled shoulder, rubbing gentle circles there. She traced her fingers along the edge of Castiel’s brand, sending a jolt through Dean’s body, reminding him why she shouldn’t be here.

His hand set on top of hers, squeezed it tight, afraid to let go. “You and Ben need to stay as far away from me as you can get. I’m not—”

“Safe, I know. Bad boys, remember? Now shut up and let me take care of you.”

She rolled down onto the bed beside him. Her lips pressed against his, soft and earnest. As her hand reached behind his head, settling into his sweaty hair, Dean closed his eyes and leaned into the gentle touch that had helped him survive his brother’s death.

Lisa was the closest thing to the angels his mom had told him about. She really had watched over him when she didn’t have a reason in the world to do it.

He nuzzled into her hair, inhaling the familiar soft scent of jasmine. Despite knowing better, he let her take him into her arms. Having the warmth of her curves pressed against him didn’t sharpen the pain in his groin, but it didn’t lessen it either.

They rolled, an indistinguishable tangle of limbs locked together until she rose up, her hips settling over his. Delicate fingers slid down his boxers. Dean sucked in a breath, raised his hips to help her. He remembered this, her just knowing what he needed. Like Sam. 

Sam.

“My brother’s...”

“I know,” she whispered against his lips. She pulled back far enough to meet his eyes with a look he didn’t want to see, he’d seen it far too many times before. “Dean, I’m so sorry about Sam.”

“Sorry?” Dean’s face scrunched as he pushed back into his pillow. “Lisa, Sam’s...”

Her hands cupped his cheeks, insistent lips cutting off his protest. She laid back down over him, the warmth of someone to cover the hollowness of loss.

Before it had been losing Sam, but Sam was back and now he didn’t know what it was. It just hurt.

Dean bit his trembling lip, buried his head into Lisa’s shoulder as moisture dampened his lashes. She held him close, whispering gently the lie over and over that everything would be okay. Dean clung desperately to her, like she was the last lifeline before the abyss.

Sam was fine, better than he had been for a long time. Maybe it was Bobby or Castiel or the whole damn mess. Maybe it was just Dean finally having to admit that he couldn’t do anything but fuck it all up.

Everything should be okay, but the hole inside him hurt more now than it ever had before.


	6. Chapter 6

The heat was sweltering just like Dean remembered. It permeated everything, engulfing him, trying to roast him from the inside out. He choked on the air heavy with sulfur and ash and hot enough to burn.

Beneath him, the soil felt icy cool against his bare, sweat-drenched skin. It was an unexpected comfort. Dean wriggled down into the slightly damp coolness. The musty earth rubbed rough against his skin, dirt filled the gashes in his flesh and small rocks dug into tender bruises. He sought out the pain, real and solid.

He dug his fingers into the compacted soil as if he could somehow go deeper beneath. Footsteps fell, stopping beside his head. At the sound of a chuckle, Dean pushed his bloody, overheated cheek into the dirt, trying to disappear.

“Nap time already, my boy?”

Alastair’s tongue made a tisking sound as the demon crouched down beside him. Claw-like fingers caressed his trembling shoulder. The strokes dug deeper, gouging his skin in an effort to reclaim the brand Castiel had seared there.

A shiver shook down Dean’s spine as the touch took a deceptively tender turn, resting on his bared hip. The finger tips aligned with bruises already forming there.

Dean forced silent the whimper that rose in his throat. It took all his strength to keep Alastair from hearing it. He steeled himself, jaw tight, struggling so hard to calm his rapid breaths he nearly held the air still in his screaming lungs.

“You’re not real,” Dean huffed through gritted teeth.

“Reality’s just not what it used to be.”

The floor dropped out from beneath him. Gouging hooks tore at his wrists, bearing the whole of Dean’s dangling weight. Alastair stepped around, taking in every exposed angle of Dean’s soul. A flick of metal and the razor was open. It traced the line of one of his ribs, visible beneath the tightly pulled flesh of his abdomen.

“You tell me, now,” Alastair said. “Does it really matter that this isn’t real?”

Alastair was right. He usually was. It didn’t matter that Dean was still in the farmhouse or that Sam was sleeping upstairs. For all Dean knew, he was still up there sleeping beside his brother.

All that mattered was Alastair. His look evaluated Dean with all the sharpness of the razor that was biting into Dean’s skin. Alastair’s eyes and blade simultaneously cut away piece by piece. 

“I could hear every thought in that noggin of yours,” Alastair said. “Do you remember that first day? What you kept thinking?”

Dean didn’t remember.

He did remember hell. It was imprinted into his soul, but he’d been dead in hell longer than he’d been alive topside. After forty years of torture, individual days blurred had together into one endless night.

Dean remained silent as Alastair circled closer. He might not remember when he’d thought specific things, but he did remember that Alastair had access to it all. They didn’t need words.

“Over and over in that simple head of yours all you thought was at least daddy had gotten out. At least little brother was still breathing. It’s not what John had been thinking, let me tell you.”

Dean had heard his father scream, not just in anger or a shout of pain. More than once he’d heard Dad bellow in agony when Dean had been too slow and a monster had ripped into him. He knew what his dad must have sounded like under Alastair’s razor and he knew who Dad would’ve blamed for being there. 

“And Sam, all your hard work to keep his soul shiny and the ungrateful brat shacks up with that demon whore. The lack of respect in kids these days, it’s sad.” Alastair shook his head in mock dismay. “The two of them fucking like rabbits while you were splayed open. Is that why you laid back and watched him throw himself into the Cage? I mean really, Dean, who could blame you?”

During his years both in hell and on earth, Dean had seen a lot of crap. Still, there were certain visuals that were so deeply carved into his memory that they were there every time he closed his eyes. Sam falling into hell was one of them.

His kid brother had stood at the precipice of an eternity of suffering, trying so damn hard to look at peace with it. Sam had simultaneously nodded to Dean that it was okay while silently asking if it would be. Then he’d just closed his eyes and fell away. The ground had swallowed him like he’d never been there at all.

If Dean had been able to stand, it would have been him, not Michael who had grabbed Sam and tumbled in after him. He knew they’d had to do what they had done, but Sam hadn’t had to go down alone.

“You in the Cage along with Sam?” Alastair asked. “I always did like the way you think, son.”

The razor slid easily over Dean’s side. It was his turn to scream. It wasn’t that he couldn’t have muffled the sound, but there was no point, not here. 

There had been times when the only choice he’d been presented with was whether or not to be heard and only because the answer didn’t matter. It was just one more yell in a chasm of echoing screams.

The blood ran steadily down his side. He didn’t notice. The pain that stripped away everything else came from places far deeper than bloody skin or torn flesh.

Alastair smeared the blood over his chest, idly tracing arcane symbols over the few patches of unbroken skin. “The pain becomes you. It really is quite delicious the way you savor it, take every slice and devote it to memory so you can serve it back to the next soul. I couldn’t have asked for a better student.”

Something swung in the background behind Alastair. A beam in the ceiling creaked under the weight of a body swinging from a rope. Dean leaned as far as he could against the restraints to see.

Sam.

His brother hung stripped and bloody, his hands bound tightly with ropes. He dangled in the middle of a devil’s trap. When Sam looked up, his eyes were black pits.

The man who stood in front of him wore jeans caked in mud and stained with blood. He gripped the demon knife in his hand. The guy turned around and Dean was left staring at himself. His eyes were cold, but rimmed with tears. His hair was matted blood and his face colored with bruises.

He turned back to his work, not stabbing with the dagger, but slashing the most tender skin in between pounding with fists. Bones snapped and flesh peeled away from muscle, falling in strips to the floor.

The supports holding Dean vanished. He crumpled to the ground. The blood was thick in his mouth and heavy in the air. The scent was so familiar it was almost comforting.

His vision waivered. He blinked and for a moment it wasn’t Sam under the knife, but Kathy. She was torn open. Two other corpses lay on the floor at her feet. Another blink of his eyes and Sam was back, being flayed by Dean himself.

It didn’t matter what color Sam’s eyes were. He was still his brother.

Dean struggled to his feet and used his last remaining energy to rush forward. He tackled himself. He didn’t even flinch throwing a punch into his own face. It wasn’t the first time. He hadn’t cared then and he didn’t care now.

They tumbled to the floor. Dean grabbed the wrist of the man beneath him, given that it was him, he knew exactly where his pressure points were. He squeezed the wrist, slamming the knuckles into the ground until the knife was released.

Before he could grab it, an unseen energy swept the knife from the floor. Dean looked over his shoulder, expecting to see Alastair. Instead, he saw Ellen, holding the knife up out of reach.

“Sam, I could use some help down here!” she called up the stairs. “He’s down here, but he’s cut himself up pretty bad.”

Dean froze on his knees, kneeling in the dirt with Sam’s still body dangling beside him. He looked up to his brother. The blood dripped from Sam’s fingertips to mingle with Dean’s own.

He didn’t know where Ellen had come from or who she was calling. Sam was right here. She was gone before he could ask and Dean didn’t have enough energy reserves left to get back up off the floor.

Before he could figure out how to get Sam down, flapping wings electrified the air. A bare bulb hanging from the ceiling erupted into a shower of sparks. The room was swallowed by darkness as black as a buried coffin.

At first, Dean wasn’t sure if he had been buried again or maybe his eyes were closed. His swelling eyelids weren’t exactly being cooperative. He couldn’t actually tell whether or not they were open.

A firm hand set on his shoulder and the searing pain was gone. Dean opened his eyes to see that the light had returned and Castiel was standing over him. He jolted up, looking around the cellar.

The rope still hung from the ceiling, but the rest was gone. It was only him and Cas and somehow he felt as if they’d been here before.

Dean remembered every day in hell, except for the last one.

He didn’t remember the angels breaking through the gates or Cas finding him, but he could imagine what a worthless piece of filth he must’ve looked like to an angel. There was no doubt in his mind that if any other angel had come for him, they would’ve left him to rot in the Pit.

Whatever Cas had done to sew his soul back together had left missing pieces. Sometimes they gnawed at him like an itch he couldn’t scratch. At the same time, he knew he was better off without them.

He didn’t know how Cas managed to stuff him back together well enough to pretend he was an actual person or how his body had been brought back from worm food. He only knew Cas had seen every part of him laid out just like Alastair had.

Dean was still on his knees when Cas stepped closer. His gaze traveled up the trench coat, which was clean of blood. Cas’s tie was immaculately tucked and his eyes were clear and certain.

This wasn’t crazy Cas or Emmanuel or Cas declaring himself God. It was just Cas. Dean wanted to tear him a new one for everything he’d brought down on them, but he didn’t because the only thing he felt more than anger was relief.

Dean tried to stand, but decided to sit instead. The pull of his muscles was now back to the familiar stiff ache of fever, the bulk of Alastair’s damage was gone. Only a few slices remained.

“You healed me,” Dean said.

“No, I don’t have the energy to spare. You simply didn’t require healing.”

Dean didn’t try to figure out that statement before he started looking for his brother. “What about Sam? Where’d he go?”

“He was upstairs. I imagine he’s on his way down now.” Castiel tilted his head as he looked over Dean. "Whatever you just experienced, you do realize it wasn’t real?"

He mostly got that. It just didn’t matter.

''Are you?" Dean asked.

“Indeed I am.”

Dean leaned back against the wall and pulled his knees up to his chest. Just because Cas had seen it all before, didn’t mean he felt like airing it out in front of an angel.

“How?” Dean asked. “Last we saw you, you were a gibbering sack of drool.”

“Yes, I perhaps should have warned you about the likely consequences of redirecting Sam’s suffering into myself.”

Dean shot Cas a glare. “You think? Man, I thought we’d lost you. Again.”

“No, I was at the hospital the entire time. I believe you would say I had some issues to work through.” Cas stood silently watching Dean for long enough it became disconcerting. “And I’ve realized this is my fault. You’ve said it changes nothing, but you often apologize for things that are not helped by it, so I’m sorry, Dean.”

It was everything he’d wanted to hear and had never expected he would. Dean sat silently for a long moment as his mind stumbled for words.

“I know you are and, you’re right, it don’t change much, but it’s something.”

Actually, it changed everything for Dean. It just did crap all to stop the leviathans from eating the planet alive. The rest of reality quickly caught up with him.

“Did Meg just let you walk out?” Dean asked.

“I sincerely doubt she’s yet found my bed empty, but I believe we have larger concerns. I know what’s happened to you, Dean, and it will take quick action to ensure your survival.”

“You can fix me?”

“I believe there are monks in the mountainous region of Yunnan that will be in possession of a traditional antidote.”

Dean stared blankly at Cas. “I got no damn clue what you just said, but Yunnan better be somewhere here in hilly foothills of Kansas.”

“No, it’s a Chinese province.”

“China? Awesome. That’s only on the other side of the world.” Dean’s sigh nearly came out as a chuckle even as he held his side to absently try to keep the seeping blood from the remaining gashes in. “I suppose you gotta zap me there?”

Dean grimaced. Aside from breaking Dean’s no leaving the country rule, just the thought of flying angel first class right now was nearly enough to make him hurl. 

“No, I don’t believe you’re strong enough to make the journey and my strength is currently limited. I’ll travel alone and once I return with the cure I’ll heal you as soon as I’m able. In the meantime...” Castiel pressed his fingers to Dean's forehead. "You need to rest.”

There was no time for Dean to protest before his body slumped to the ground.

~~~

A gentle hand carded through Dean’s sweat-soaked hair. It was cool against his overheated forehead.

Dean relaxed into the arms that supported him and shivered. His body was cooling. Without the fires of hell to warm him, the cold air of reality sunk into his flesh and chilled his bones. He couldn’t stop shaking.

“You’re okay, baby,” the soft voice cooed to him.

It was a distant memory, warm and comforting, from a time when there hadn’t been monsters lurking in the dark. Dad had still been happy and Sammy could’ve had any life he’d wanted. Dean used to dream of this on the rare nights the nightmares didn’t come.

Wavy blond locks brushed against his grimy cheek, still caked with dirt and blood. She had to be able to see how filthy he was inside and out, but Mom just smiled down at him silently promising it was all okay. Her eyes told him he could do no wrong and he wanted so badly to believe her, even though he knew better.

“I got you.”

And he knew she did. Somehow she had all along. Dean only wished he’d been able to save her. He’d had three chances and he’d failed them all. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t give to be able to go back just once more to trade places with her.

Sam wouldn’t have remembered him enough to miss him and Mom and Dad would’ve gotten over it. Together, they could have protected Sam a hell of a lot better than Dean had.

“I’m sorry,” Dean whispered. “It should’ve been me.”

“Don’t you dare talk like that. It wasn’t your fault, sweetie.” Her voice was stronger, sterner than he remembered, but no less comforting. “Now I need you to do something for me, okay?”

Dean nodded. He couldn’t find the words to tell her, but there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.

“All right, that’s my boy. I need you to get up now.”

Dean blinked at the request. The warm glow around him melted away to cold darkness. The only light came from the dying bare bulb hung from a chain in the low ceiling.

As he raised his head he caught a glimpse of the blood-smeared gashes over his chest and side, the ones that Castiel hadn’t been able to heal. When he turned his head, it wasn’t Mom sitting beside him.

“Ellen? Where’d you come from?”

“I never left. Now come on, Dean. It’s okay if you gotta crawl, but you need to get on over to the stairs.”

Dean didn’t know why and didn’t think to ask. Orders he could process. He wasn’t sure if he could stand, but he sure as hell wasn’t crawling. The root cellar came more into focus around him as he stumbled to his feet.

He scuffed through a salt line he only half remembered throwing down. A lot of damn good it had done. It hadn’t worked to keep Alastair out.

“Oh, God, Dean. What did you do?”

Dean’s stare jerked up from the floor. Sam was suddenly there, wrapping his arms around him as Dean’s knees gave out. Carefully, Sam lowered him back to the dirt.

“Didn’t wanna hurt you,” Dean slurred.

He blinked and Ellen was behind Sam, halfway up the stairs. “I’m gonna start some hot water.”

Then she was gone again. Dean looked up to Sam for an explanation, but his brother wasn’t looking up the stairs, he was looking back at Dean.

Sam was silent and still like he was determining a plan of attack. Maybe he was just deciding whether or not cleaning Dean up was worth the trouble. His gaze traveled over the floor to where Dean had apparently been sick at some point.

The visual resurfaced of Sam strung up from the ceiling. He looked over his shoulder at the hanging rope and beneath it to the ground. There was no devil’s trap on the floor, but the dirt was scuffed up in a circle where it had been and the ground was darker than it should be. 

The blood on his hands was still sticky, though the dirt did well to cover it up. Even though his body was cold, his side was hot and moist. It wasn't until Sam's hands were on him that Dean realized he was naked.

“I...Sammy, I don’t know what happened.”

“It's okay, Dean.” Sam crouched down in front of him. “We just need to get you upstairs. Can you walk?”

“‘Course I can,” Dean replied automatically.

Despite his moderately sure words, his legs felt like deadweight beneath him. His movements to stand tore at the cuts on his side. He bit back a cry as the pain turned white hot. Dean would’ve been back on the ground if Sam hadn’t grabbed him.

“I can do it,” Dean said, trying to push his brother off. “Just let me do it.”

He hadn’t wanted it to sound like the plea that it was, but at least it made Sam back off and give him some space. The wall was there to support him as Dean’s stance waivered.

It wasn’t only pride that made Dean want distance between him and Sam. While it hadn’t been real, as far as his mind was concerned, Dean had just watched his brother being tortured after a round with Alastair. He should be sick, but he was hard to the point that the pain in his groin had moved past aching to so tender that just the jostling of his hips made his nerves scream.

It wasn’t as if Dean had never felt the sensation before, and worse. Things could be drawn out in hell unimaginably beyond what a human body could actually endure and it wasn’t as if Alastair had the decency to keep things above the belt.

Dean didn’t know or care how Alastair was doing it as only a delusion in his head. He just needed Sam not to see.

“Where the hell are my clothes?”

“I don’t know, Dean. Where’d you put them?”

“I didn’t put them anywhere. Alastair...forget it.”

Dean scanned the shadows of the cellar. The dagger lying on the ground, still wet with blood, caught his eye and tickled at his memory.

He walked along the wall to try to keep himself from falling on his ass. It took most of the focus he had to not look like he was waddling while not kicking up any more spikes of pain between his legs.

“Where are you going?” Sam asked. “We’ll find your clothes later.”

“Hang on.”

Dean couldn’t have told his brother what he was looking for. He didn’t know it until he saw it. Not too far from the door there was a bundle of clothes on the floor.

He didn’t remember until he lifted the heavy denim that he hadn’t worn pants to bed. When he really thought about it, he hadn’t even had boxers on by the time Lisa had disappeared. His clothes were all up in the bedroom, but he was holding a pair of jeans in his hands and right now he wasn’t picky about whose pants they were.

Something overly familiar stopped him from sliding right into them. Instead, he held them up in the dim light. They were his jeans. Not the ones he’d worn to the house, but a pair he’d thought he’d lost a couple of weeks ago.

“Come on, Dean, just leave those. We have to stop that bleeding.”

Dean barely heard his brother as he realized why the pants were so heavy. They were caked in layers of dried mud and stained dark. Pulling a forged FBI card from the back pocket confirmed they were his.

“Don’t make me carry you up the stairs,” Sam warned.

Dean swallowed down the knot in his throat. He tried to focus on the fact he was high as a kite and strutting around naked. It wasn’t anything Sam hadn’t seen before, but it was way more than Dean felt like sharing right now and there wasn’t much point in reading too much into a pair of jeans that probably weren’t even really there.

He dropped the pants back onto the floor. As much as he wanted something to hide in, he couldn’t make himself put them on. He could wait until he got upstairs.

“I’m coming,” Dean said. He shot Sam a warning glare when his brother motioned for him to head up the stairs first. “If you stare at my ass, I will kick yours.”

"Do you have an erection?" 

Dean didn’t make it up the first step before Sam’s question stopped him in his tracks. He’d been hoping his brother wasn’t looking down there, but wasn’t actually surprised Sam had noticed given how closely he was watching him. He’d just thought Sam would have the decency to keep his mouth shut about it.

''Do I have...? Dude, what the hell? What my dick is doing falls under the category of things we never talk about.” At Sam’s skeptical look, Dean clarified. “Unless I’m the one that brings it up.”

“Was it Alastair?” Sam asked.

“Alastair groping me did not give me a fucking hard-on!”

Dean drove his fist into the wall. He didn’t have the strength to make the satisfying crunch he’d needed. It only reverberated a shock of pain down his arm.

He wasn’t pissed at Sam. Right now, his brother was one of the only things he wasn’t angry at, though if Sam kept staring at him he’d get there pretty quick.

“I know you, Dean.”

Dean quickly looked away. His gaze wandered up the staircase in an effort to be anywhere but here with his brother finally admitting the truth. Sam could see straight through his act.

The words twisted to a hundred different statements in his head. He heard Sam telling him that he knew what he was and it was everything Alastair had said. Sam knew what Dean had done to him and what he’d imagined doing. Sam knew his life was hell and that he’d literally gone to hell because of him.

“You’re not the only one here who’s been to hell,” Sam continued when Dean only bit his lip. “I know we’ve never talked about it. I know we never will, but I _know_.”

The shame and self-hate Dean had barely been choking down boiled to the surface. Dean swallowed then forced himself to answer.

“No, you don’t. I mean...yeah, I get it, you think you know and...damn it, Sammy.” Dean wiped his hand over his face. “I’d give anything for you not to know. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but we weren’t in the same hell.” Dean sucked in a breath. “I was the one forcing the hard-ons.”

Dean leaned back against the wall. Through the moisture brimming in his eyes, he forced himself to watch Sam’s expression. He deserved to see the full brunt of his brother’s disgust.

“God, Dean. How could you even...”

Sam’s voice trailed off and Dean nodded in agreement to the unspoken words. How could he think he had any right to be standing here breathing? He deserved this curse and to go back to hell.

When Sam continued, Dean barely heard him. He was too startled by the sadness in his brother’s eyes. It wasn’t the despair of disappointment he’d seen in his father’s eyes more than once. It was just grief and Dean didn’t understand why it was there.   
“The things you did in hell…” Sam shook his head. “You can try to spin it however you want in your head, but like I said, I know you. You took what Alastair had done to you and you turned it on other souls, not because you wanted to, but because that’s what you had to do to survive.”

Dean stared dumbfounded at his brother. “I was just looking out for myself and that’s supposed to make it okay?”

There was no way to even begin to say that those things he’d done weren’t his fault. He could pretend to place blame all he wanted, but it still came down to the fact that it had been his hand on the razor.

Dad had held out. If Dean had been strong enough, if he was still down hanging on a rack in the Pit, the world would be a far better place. Sure he’d saved plenty of lives since he’d been brought back, but without him, most of them wouldn’t have needed saving.

“You’re the least selfish person I know. If you did it, it’s because you didn’t have another choice and, Dean, you didn’t know what would happen. You didn’t start the apocalypse. Neither of us did. It was Lilith and Alastair and things so much bigger than us.” Sam turned his head away. “No one gave me a choice, but if they had, I wouldn’t have held out for thirty years.”

“Yeah, you would’ve,” Dean said when he found his voice. “You’re a hell of a lot stronger than either of us have ever given you credit for.”

“Maybe, but only because I’ve tried to be like you.” Sam put his hand on Dean’s shoulder and directed him back towards the stairs. “Seriously, come on. You gotta get cleaned up.”

Dean was thankful for a way out of the conversation that he couldn’t deal with right now, probably not ever. He didn’t even fight Sam’s help guiding him up the steps. Unfortunately, the reprieve only lasted until they made it to the top of the stairs.

“I really do need to know if it was Alastair,” Sam said.

When Dean looked confused, Sam nodded low. Dean followed the general direction of his gaze then rolled his eyes.

“You seriously can’t stop looking at my dick? Don’t worry, Sammy, someday your balls will drop too.”

“Dean, this is important.”

“How could this...whatever. It was before Alastair. It was...I don’t know. It’s just been there. I tried to...” Dean made an obscene jerking motion with his hand. “You know. A lot. It just made it hurt more…man, it really fucking hurts.”

“How long has it been?” Sam asked.

“I’m dying here, Sam, can we not play twenty questions about my dick?”

“I need to know.”

“Dude, you need a chick.”

“Dean...”

“If I was taking Viagra I’d be calling my doctor.”

"This is good," Sam said.

''No part of this is good."

“Remember what Mackey said?"

"About me liking my dick?” Dean asked. “What? You gonna tell me this is part of the curse? This one of the issues I gotta work through? That’s crap because I can tell you, I got zero performance issues. I mean, seriously, have you seen this thing?"

Sam made a disgusted sound. "Even bleeding out, you’re still an ass. And no, priapism is one of the symptoms of the banana spider venom. So is pain and loss of muscle control.”

“Those last two I got.”

“You got the first one too,” Sam said as he led Dean towards the second floor stairs. He must have felt Dean tense because he stopped. “Can you make these ones? I know you’re tired, but there isn’t a bath down here.”

Dean distantly acknowledged the fact that his wounds were caked with dirt from rolling on the cellar floor, but he didn’t exactly care either. He didn’t need a bath.

“Just spray me down with a hose, I’ll be fine.”

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d showered under a garden hose. He’d done a hunt with Dad up in the northern peninsula of Michigan. It had been fall. The sugar maples had been in full color and it had felt like it was about zero degrees.

They’d been dosed with chunks of innards. Dean’s clothes had been sopping wet and all he’d wanted was a hot shower. Instead Dad had decided that the slime layer they were coated in would clog the drain.

Dean hadn’t given a flying crap about clogging the drain of some motel he’d never see again, but when Dad had given him the order to strip, Dean had nonetheless ended up standing buck naked behind some poor bastard’s rose bushes getting blasted with a stream of ice cold water. The memory alone rocked a shiver through him.

“Only you would seriously think that was a good idea,” Sam said. “You’re already shaking. Can you just try?”

“I wouldn’t bother, if I were you,” Alastair said.

Dean jerked his head to the demon standing at the base of the staircase. Alastair wore an eager smirk, his whole stance screamed of anticipation. Dean stopped his shuffled steps, not wanting to get any closer to Alastair.

“We already know that doesn’t wash off.” Alastair’s eyes roamed over Dean’s exposed body as he fondled the razor. “You just don’t clean up proper.”

“Dean?” Sam asked.

He heard his brother, but answering him was second priority to dealing with the demon, which was suddenly right beside him. “You know what you are, why draw it out?” Alastair asked as he leaned into Dean. “Make it easier for everyone. I’ve dusted off your old rack. It’ll be just like old times.”

Sam tried again. “Dean who’s there?”

His grip on Dean’s arm tightened. Sam squeezed hard enough to pull Dean back to the room and the only person who was actually by his side.

“No one.” Dean glanced around the room to confirm it. “Let’s just get upstairs.”

Dean fumbled to grip the stair railing, gritting his teeth with every step his toes jammed against. All he had to do was walk, but his feet weren’t interested in rising to the full height of the steps.

He was panting by the time he reached the top. “This is fucking ridiculous.”

“You’re doing fine.”

Dean was ready to just sit down on the floor by the time they reached the bathroom. Only Sam's coaxing got him across the grungy linoleum tiles to the free-standing pedestal tub.

He doubted he could climb into it, let alone just step in. His knees began to weaken. Every nerve in his body was shooting a wave of agony while his muscles were barely responsive. Unconsciousness sounded pretty damn good right now.

He didn't pass out, but somehow he did end up in the tub, leaning back against the chilled porcelain for support. Still, his body slumped so he was closer to lying down. He turned his hips to the side, away from Sam.

"Okay, I got this," Dean said.

He reached up to turn on the faucet, but Sam's hand intercepted his. ''There's no hot water."

Dean hadn't noticed that the house didn't have hot water and it wasn’t like it mattered. At least cold water might numb his nerves and it would wash away the dirt as good as anything, but before he could push Sam's hand aside, he realized his brother held a kettle of water.

"Oh hell no," Dean said ''You are not giving me a sponge bath. You're gonna have to cop a feel some other time."

But Sam obviously knew that Dean was too weak to stop him. Instead of backing off, Sam poured the warm water over his shaking shoulders. A mess of dirt and blood washed down his skin to swirl in the basin of the tub.

Dean pulled his knees up to his chest, but it was too much work to keep them there. He gave up, letting his limbs sprawl. Sam grasped his arm, propping it up on the tub's edge. He wiped a towel over his forearm before dabbing a spot with antiseptic.

''Since Mackey had mentioned it, we already got a hold of the banana spider antivenin," Sam said as he prepared a syringe. "At least we're sure about this one.”

Dean leaned his head back against the rim of the tub and focused on breathing through the pain. ''Will it fix my happy banana problem?"

“It should.” Sam held Dean’s arm still while he inserted the syringe. “Now we just have to stop that bleeding.”

Sam set the syringe aside on the counter and returned to sparingly pouring the water over Dean. He set the kettle down and focused on the worst of the cuts. Dean hissed, balling his fists and closing his eyes.

“Why’d you do it?” Sam asked.

“I wasn’t aiming for me wrists, if that’s what you’re asking. My coordination ain’t that shot.”

Sam pressed a rag to the wound, holding pressure on it. “It’s not funny, Dean.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“This cut’s pretty deep. You said you did it because you didn’t want to hurt me...how does doing this to yourself stop you from hurting me?”

Dean opened his eyes, tipping his head in Sam’s general direction without actually looking at him. “I thought you were on the rack and I...I guess I got messed up with Alastair.”

Sam patted the wound dry. He rocked back where he knelt beside the tub and played with a butterfly bandage before pulling off the adhesive backing and leaning forward again to apply it to Dean’s wound. Sam had the common sense to know Dean wouldn’t go for stitches as long as he was conscious.

“Dean, you do know what happened to me in hell wasn’t your fault, right? All of it with the cage and Lucifer...it was because of choices I’d made.”

“It’s my job to protect you.”

Sam secured several more bandages over Dean’s side before taping a piece of gauze over them. His hand lingered, lightly resting over the gauze before moving on to clean up the smaller cuts.

“No, it wasn’t.” Sam shook his head. “You went to hell for me. You did everything you possibly could’ve, way more than you should have. Nothing that’s happened to me was your fault. I just need you to know that.”

“And as sweet as that is, maybe we could talk about it while I’m not freezing my horny ass off in a bathtub.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Sam finished applying the last bandage before grabbing a towel and reaching to help Dean out. Dean snatched the towel and threw it over his lap, but hunkered further down into the tub, crossing his arms over is chest and shaking his head.

“Not until you get me my pants.”

“Uh, Dean...I don’t think you’re gonna want to wear your pants.”

Dean looked at Sam like he’d just grown a second head. “Believe me, there’s nothing I want more right now than pants.”

“I mean, you’re not going to want to wear your jeans,” Sam said. “How about I grab my sweats?”

“Oh, yeah. Probably a good idea,” Dean admitted. “And Sam?”

“Yeah, Dean?”

“Were the knife and the jeans really in the cellar?”

Sam hesitated in the doorway before turning back to Dean. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I must’ve forgotten them in the rush to get you out of here after the hunt. Neither of us was exactly thinking straight.”

By the time Dean looked back up, Sam was gone from the doorway. Dean slipped so far down in the tub that his back was flat on the bottom. He pulled the towel up as if the scraggly thing could actually serve as a blanket and wrapped his arms around himself as his body shook. 

He stared up at the mildew spotted ceiling before his gaze settled on the wall, watching the patterns of light dance as the sun filtered through the leaves of the tree outside. It made him think of summer and running through empty back lots with Sammy and swimming in the lake out by Pastor Jim’s. 

Dean missed being warm.

“Here you go.”

He didn’t sit up, just turned his head at Sam’s words. His brother was back by the edge of the tub with a pair of sweats and a hoodie they both knew were going to make him look ridiculous. 

Dean started to get up, but stopped, resting on his elbow as he looked closer at the pile Sam held. Something metallic dangled from it, catching the sunlight. Sam’s gaze was also on the bundle in his arms before he sat on the toilet seat beside the tub. 

“What is that?” Dean asked. 

Sam hesitated before setting the clothes on the counter and revealing the amulet dangling from his hand. He clutched the leather loop of the necklace uncertainly. It was his amulet, the one he’d trashed after deciding that it hadn’t meant anything. 

Dean had worn that thing for nearly twenty years. He’d never taken it off under his own free will until Castiel had wanted it to go find God. It had been hard for him to let it go then, but it had been easy in the motel room because their trip to heaven had proven that he and Sam weren’t in it together, not like he’d thought. 

Sure, Sam was there, but only because he hadn’t had a choice. It was like him eating all that junk food Dean had stuck in front of him as a kid. Sam had wanted a salad, but he got Funyuns because that was all Dean had to give. 

In heaven, Dean had seen that Sam wasn’t hunting at his side because he’d wanted to be with his family. It was just the only crap choice the world had stuck him with. 

Then, it had seemed clear. Now, it was even clearer. What he’d seen in heaven hadn’t been Sam’s greatest wishes fulfilled. It had just been what Zachariah had wanted Dean to see and like an idiot, he’d fallen for it. 

What he was seeing now, his brother hauling his naked ass around, stitching up his wounds and cleaning up his vomit. That wasn’t someone who was in it half way. It was what Dean had done for Dad and he knew first hand how much you had to love someone to put up with that shit. 

“I was wrong,” Dean said. 

“So was I.”

It was all either of them had needed to hear and as he lay there shaking, Dean couldn’t figure out why it had taken them so damn long to say it. 

Sam helped him to sit up and directed him to lean forward so he could dry off his back. He looped the necklace over his head. Dean pulled in an unsteady breath as the comfort of the familiar weight washed over him. 

He hadn’t realized just how naked he’d felt without it. Even still sitting buck naked in the tub, he felt more covered than he had for years.

Dean clutched the cool metal as Sam grabbed the sweatshirt. He only released the amulet long enough to raise his arms, or at least try to. They wouldn’t lift over his chest without Sam grasping them and pulling them through the sleeves. 

The hoodie flopped over Dean’s head as Sam tugged it down over his chest before pushing the hood back for him. 

“Your muscle control might get a little worse before it gets better, but it will get better, Dean.”

Dean nodded. “I think I just need to sit for a minute.”

He leaned back against the side of the tub. It was getting hard to breathe again and he was pretty sure he couldn’t get back out. If Cas didn’t come through, he didn’t know if he’d be able to run again or even stand on his own two feet. It hurt so much just to sit. 

Sam disappeared long enough to grab a blanket and pillow from the bedroom. He leaned in with a towel to dry the bottom of the tub around Dean before laying the comforter over him and tucking it around his trembling shoulders. Then Sam lifted Dean’s head just enough to slip the pillow beneath it.

Sam settled down on the floor beside the tub. He leaned against it and reached in to lay his hand on Dean’s shoulder. Dean turned his head on the pillow to rest his cheek against Sam’s arm. 

Maybe his body wouldn’t heal. Maybe he’d never even get out of the damn tub, but he was already better in the only way that really mattered.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean sat stiffly at the kitchen table while Sam cut new patches of gauze to change his bandages. He’d taken off the sweatshirt so Sam could work, but Dean was still wearing Sam’s oversized sweatpants. The extra length in the legs fell past his ankles to cover his feet from the cold tile of the kitchen floor. 

Sam was paranoid about him bleeding to death. Though the bleeding had finally stopped, the simple pressure of Sam’s hand against his skin shot pain through his screaming nerves. 

“It still hurts?” Sam asked. 

Dean worked to steady his breathing as Sam washed the area around the larger cut. He’d already told Sam not to waste his time, but Sam was getting more stubborn than ever about not listening to him and while Dean could move on his own again, he still wasn’t up to kicking his little brother’s ass.

“Slicing yourself up usually does.”

It was a pain he was accustomed to. He’d been drawing knives over his skin since he was fifteen and Dad had handed him a dagger to slit his palm open with. Six years earlier he’d seen Dad do it for the first time, had bandaged him up afterwards, and had dreaded the day he’d have to use the knife himself. 

The anticipation of the pain was worse than the actual cut. Dean had been more absorbed with his father’s encouragement at the time than the slicing of his skin. It had hurt a lot more after the ritual was over and Dad had to move on to the next monster. 

Cut skin wasn’t the pain that was bothering him now. It was the constant throbbing that ran deep through his tired muscles and the random twitches of nerves firing sharp enough to stop him in his tracks. Sam had used big words to say his pain receptors were on overload and said he was lucky it wasn’t worse. 

He sure as hell didn’t feel lucky, but he would take what he could get. At least the injection had taken care of his downstairs problem and he could finally sit without feeling as if his balls were about to burst. 

Things felt better in general knowing that he wasn’t just waiting to be driven off a cliff in a short bus. Once Castiel got back, they could hit the road and finally return to what they were supposed to be doing. 

In the meantime, he was stuck trying to figure out how many people were really in the kitchen with him. 

Dean’s chest tightened as he looked back up at Bobby. He sat at the far side of the kitchen table reading through the books. His face was tight with a grimace as he scratched beneath his cap. Dean had always hated research, but he missed watching Bobby hunched in concentration.

Ellen stood behind Bobby, looking anxious as she leaned over his shoulder to read. She kept looking in Dean’s direction, but he wasn’t sure if she really saw him because she never met his eyes. 

Jo paced in the background. Dean was transfixed with watching her. She was pale like he remembered from Osiris using her in his trial, but it was a far better visual than the bloody one that usually surfaced in his mind. 

In the pantry behind Jo, the snake was still slithering around in its container. It kept circling the edges, rising up to test the lid. The thing creeped Dean out, but Sam had wanted to keep it in case they could use it to make a cure and Dean didn’t know what else to do with it.

Dean raised his arms as Sam guided them up. He rested his hands on his head, grimacing when Sam pulled off the tape holding the gauze of another cut and took a decent amount of hair along with it.

“You wanna try leaving some of my manliness there?” Dean asked.

“Sorry,” Sam said. “I didn’t exactly have time to shave you first.”

“It would’ve been the last thing you did.”

Dean did his best to focus on the distraction of banter, but it wasn’t enough to hold his attention. He couldn’t help but look back up at the others. When he did, the kitchen was empty. 

The books lay untouched, only a few pages fluttering from the breeze that pushed in through the open kitchen window. Sam and the snake were the only ones still there. Dean squeezed his eyes closed.

He tried to convince himself it was a good thing. That leviathan had still been wrong. He wasn’t all that was left. 

“Okay,” Sam said as he guided Dean’s arms back down. “We should try another injection before you get dressed.”

“We keep this up and I’m gonna start looking like a junkie.” Dean pursed his lips as he watched Sam retrieve another vile from the fridge. “You know this isn’t working.”

Sam hesitated before filling the syringe. “The last one helped.”

“It treated the symptoms, but you said it yourself, this stuff probably gave me the damn fever that left me strung up in the Pit. Let’s just wait for Cas.”

“Dean, I know what I said, but we don’t know when...or if Castiel is coming.”

“He’ll be back.” 

Dean’s skin was covered with goose bumps. He opened his mouth to tell Sam to shut the window, but when he looked over, the window wasn’t open. Dean grabbed the sweatshirt off the table and pulled it on. 

The damn hood flopped over his face again. He jerked it off, but when he brought his arm back down, his elbow bumped a glass that had been sitting on the edge of the table. It should have fallen, but didn’t.

Dean was afraid to look to see which delusion had caught it, but it couldn’t be a delusion because Sam was looking at it too.

“Bobby?” Dean could barely whisper the name then strained his ears to listen. Another chill crawled over him. “He’s here.”

“Dean...”

“Damn it, Sam! I told you he’s here. Something knocked that box away from the witch leviathan and I heard Bobby going through the books in here. The other day, he stopped me from stepping on that cup and something took that knife away from me in the cellar. He’s here.” 

Dean stopped to catch his breath. He pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing at his brow as if it could clear up the pounding in his head. His certainty began to dissolve. 

“Or I really am just crazy.”

“You’re not crazy,” Sam said.

“Then what? I’m just hearing voices? Feeling things? Because, yeah, that’s not two steps away from—”

“You’re right, Dean. Bobby’s here.”

Dean’s mouth opened, but no words came out. He wasn’t all that shocked about Bobby. It was the expression on Sam’s face that floored him. This wasn’t some revelation for Sam. This was just his brother reporting the news. 

Dean gripped the knee of the sweats, balling up the fabric in his fist before letting go to give the table a hard shove. The table legs screeched over the floor, pushing into the throw rug Sam was so obsessed with. 

He surged to his feet, storming towards Sam. “Bobby’s here and you knew about it?”

Sam looked guilty, but overall his expression was annoyingly calm, almost placating. “Sit down before you tear your side open again.”

Dean wanted to haul off and punch him, but he was too confused to make a move. He’d thought Sam had given back the amulet to show that they were through with these stupid games. 

“How long have you known?” Dean asked.

“A while.”

“A while? And you didn’t tell me because you thought I liked thinking I was crazy? What the hell, Sam?”

Sam wasn’t looking at him anymore. He was leaning back against the counter fidgeting with the syringe in his hand. “Dean, you already knew.”

“I...what?”

Dean couldn’t hold onto his anger as he watched sorrow flood into Sam’s eyes. He creased his brow as he tried to jam in another piece that didn’t fit with what he remembered. 

“I did tell you,” Sam said. “Bobby did, too, but after... You just blocked it out. I wanted to tell you again when you asked, but...”

“We all agreed you already had enough on your plate.” 

It was Bobby’s voice clear as a bell. The sound was gruff and warm. It was a voice that had so many times assured him that things would be okay, but right now, he didn’t know whether to be relieved or sick at the sound of it. 

“Bobby?”

Dean’s eyes widened as Bobby flickered into view. It was near impossible to trust his own eyes with all he’d been seeing, but he also felt the presence deep in his gut. He didn’t really look pale like Jo. He just looked like Bobby. 

Dean stepped back, felt for the chair and sunk down into it. He closed his moist eyes and opened them again. Bobby was still there. His posture was casual and his expression worried. 

“How’re you still here?” Dean asked.

“I got boys that need me.”

Bobby said it like it mattered, like he could just hold back because he had unfinished business and it was okay. Dean wanted so badly for Bobby to really be standing there alive and breathing, but he wasn’t alive and he shouldn’t still be here. Worst of all, Bobby more than anyone knew better.

“Bobby, you can’t just...” 

Dean’s words trailed off as he followed Sam’s gaze to Bobby’s flask sitting on the table. Bobby had no doubt bled on the leather at some point. Dean grasped the flask and turned it over in his hands before looking up to Bobby. 

“You can’t be here.”

“Don’t you tell me what I can and can’t do, boy,” Bobby said. “Someone’s gotta keep your stubborn ass above ground. You wanna argue natural order, that’s fine, but save it until you’re up and walking.”

Dean did want to argue, but Bobby shot him his sternest fatherly look, which only Dad had ever been able to beat. It was too much to take in. He focused on searching his scattered memory. 

“How’d you get past the salt line in the cellar?” Dean asked.

The answer didn’t come from Bobby, but from an equally familiar voice behind him. “That was me and I was already down there with you when you laid it.”

Ellen walked around the side of the table and stopped to stand beside his chair. She was finally looking at him, but now it was Dean who couldn’t meet her eyes. 

“You were really there?” he asked. 

“Told you, sweetie, I’ve been here the whole time.”

Dean looked to Sam for confirmation that she was really here now. Sam gave a subtle nod and Dean tipped his head back, clenching his jaw as he swallowed. The only thing worse than Ellen having seen him like that was the fact she was here at all. 

“Why?” Dean nearly choked on the world. “Why the hell would either of you still be here?”

Bobby snorted. “You really messed up enough in that head of yours to have to ask?”

“You should both be in heaven and you’re standing in the middle of fucking nowhere watching Sam reenact Dr. Sexy MD. Yeah, I think that requires a pretty damn good explanation.”

“It takes a village to keep you alive, you idjit,” Bobby said.

Ellen stepped forward to stand shoulder and shoulder with Bobby. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Hell and losing Sam, what he’d done to Lisa, how he’d failed Dad and the people he’d gotten killed were things that played over non-stop in Dean’s head with or without a curse. But this nightmare was new. It was one thing to get someone killed. It was an entirely different thing to destroy their soul. 

He didn’t know what was really going on here, but his stomach twisted in knots at the thought that the people he cared about most had thrown away peace to stay behind for him. It was a waste. 

“I’d get you going all vengeful spirit on my ass for getting the both of you killed. Hell, I deserve it, but please tell me you didn’t give up heaven just to follow us around.” 

“Now, you hold on right there,” Ellen said. “No one in this room is dead because of you.”

Dean stumbled out of the chair. He was too taken aback to watch his footing and tripped himself up on the legs of the sweats. He caught himself on the table. 

His hands spread over the wood in search of something solid. His shoulders hunched and his head hung low as he stared down far past the wood he braced against. 

“I built the bomb that killed you and you only stayed because I let your daughter die.” Dean’s voice had started out carefully measured and ended barely above a whisper. “I promised to protect her and instead I got you both dead.”

“I didn’t need you to protect me, Dean.” Jo was back by the pantry. She stepped forward to stand by her mother. “And, hey, I thought we’ve already been over this. We were in the same fight is all. Some soldiers make it out and some don’t.”

“You weren’t soldiers. None of you were. You were just good people that got thrown into this shit.” 

“Us and every other hunter,” Bobby said. “Including you.”

“No.” Dean stood up though his shoulders remained slumped and his lashes hooded his eyes. The sleeves of the sweatshirt fell down past his hands. “There’s nowhere else for someone like me, but Sam, all of you, you didn’t have to be in this.”

“If that ain’t the biggest pile of horse shit I ever heard...” Bobby moved in front of him so close that Dean had to take a step back. “You’re just a human like the rest of us, kid, and you were the damn sweetest, most gentle boy I ever met. There’s not a thing you could say to make a one of us believe you were born a killer and you damn well better not be thinking it.”

Dean turned away from Bobby and used the sleeve of the sweatshirt to swipe away the tears in his eyes before they could fall. Sam came up behind him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, you need to sit down.”

“No.”

Dean shoved him away. He winced at the pain the motion ripped through his side. His hand wrapped around his abdomen as he headed for door.

“Dean, where are you going?” Sam called after him.

“Out.”

The kitchen’s screen door slammed behind him. Dean didn’t look back to see if anyone, dead or alive, was following. He just needed to get out of the house filled with the souls he’d damned. 

He was well out the door before he came back to himself enough to notice he didn’t have shoes on. Walking around barefoot outside was something he never did. The soles of feet were tender, used to being wrapped in wool socks and work boots. 

The dry grass was rough and scratchy. His over-reactive nerves made him jerk at each rock he stepped on. But it was far from the worst thing Alastair had ever forced him to walk on. 

He continued on to the old oak tree beside the grave. His knees gave out by the time he reached it. He slid against the trunk of the tree, a controlled fall to the ground. 

The tree would be a cool spot of shade on a warm summer day, but the sun had gone and the skies were grey. Even as angry storm clouds threatened on the horizon, it was still warmer than inside the house. 

Dean’s legs sprawled as he leaned back. The shovel that had dug the grave was propped against the tree beside him. 

He could feel the others in the house still watching. For all he knew, they weren’t even still in the house, but right beside him. That was all he’d wanted, not to be left alone, but he hadn’t wanted it like this and couldn’t understand why they’d stayed. 

Dean pulled the hood of the sweatshirt over his head and hunkered down inside it. He took a deep breath. 

By the smell of the sweatshirt, Sam hadn’t washed it after his last jog. He didn’t know why the lingering reek of his brother’s sweat was comforting, but he breathed it in as his gaze settled on the grave. 

~~~

Pain gripped his insides, tearing like a fist twisting his intestines, like hands digging into his body cavity to fish out every last scrap. Dean was too lost in the haze of sleep and the wash of cramps gripping his gut to consider that a person shouldn’t actually know what that felt like. But Dean knew all too well the grappling of hungry hands helping themselves to every last piece of him.

He kicked out, feeling the binds restraining him tighten, the heat smothering him. A sweat-soaked gag closed over his mouth, trapping in the acid that burned his throat. He choked, eyes watering as he struggled not to inhale his own vomit.

A cold touch to the overheated skin of his back was too comforting to be here. The gag was pulled away and Dean turned his head far enough to cough up. He rolled onto his stomach, jerking his arms free of their restraints and gasping in a painful breath.

Dean’s arms shook with the effort of propping himself up on his elbows. His stomach spasmed again before he could think of getting up. He gagged, spitting the stringy mucus onto the bed beneath him.

It was a bed. His fingers gripped the wet sheets, thankful to the point he let his shoulders sag and his sweaty forehead rest against the pillow.

When he pried his eyes open, there weren’t hordes of starving souls under Alastair’s watchful gaze. There was only darkness warmed by predawn light squeezing between dusty window blinds. There was no scent of sulphur or blood that wasn’t his own, just musty, stale air.

He remained semi-propped up, too exhausted to move to a different position. His eyes again fell closed as he relaxed into the coolness of the draft that continued to assuage his aching shoulders.

His body had nearly collapsed again, startled back awake only by the slickness smeared over his chest and the foul scent assaulting his nostrils. 

“Damn it.”

Dean’s voice was weak and raw even to his own ears. He grimaced as he struggled to focus his eyes on the bed beneath him. The liquid splattered over the sheets and his chest was too dark to not be laced with blood.

Sam was going to freak. Again.

His shaky hands wiped his chin clean. Trying to stand nearly landed him on the floor, his legs and torso bound in a restricting tangle of sheets. He tried to push them off, panic creeping up when they wouldn’t release him. Then they suddenly became cooperative and slid off.

Dean kicked them aside, frustration nearly boiling over. His fist curled as he sat on the edge of the bed, just breathing. His bare feet soaked in the cold of rough wood boards. He let his head tilt back, eyelids falling heavy.

A sharp twinge in his abdomen sent him shooting to his feet, stabilizing himself on the bed and pausing only long enough to pull up the sheets to cover the stain when he heard his brother call his name.

“I’m fine,” Dean said. Speaking tickled a cough from his irritated throat. He clenched his jaw when it passed, trying to sound steady. “Just go back to bed.”

Only the other bed was empty, blankets still tucked as if no one had slept in it at all. Dean didn’t have a chance to consider where his brother’s voice had come from before his stomach churned again.

He scrambled to the bathroom, only reaching the sink before he doubled over. Red-streaked mucus splattered over the cracked porcelain and Dean fumbled to turn on the water to wash it away while he sloppily wiped his chest clean. Mostly he just got his bandages wet.

The counter supported him as he rode out another wave of pain sharp enough to tighten the lungs in his chest. He blinked away the moisture that smeared his vision and banged his fist against the counter he was draped over.

When it passed, he pushed himself up and again wiped his chin clean. He found enough coordination to lean down and catch the water flowing from the faucet. Gulping it in, he rinsed his mouth, uselessly trying to spit away the sour, tangy taste.

Dean’s body shook, standing on the cold tile in his boxers finally catching up with him. He glared at the cracked window over the tub. Sam had taped it up, but the old single-pane still let out all the heat.

He risked a look at himself in the mirror, but noticed only the reflection of his brother standing behind him. Immediately, Dean wiped his hand over his stinging eyes and straightened his posture. He left one hand on the sink for support as he turned around to face Sam without meeting his brother’s anxious gaze.

“I told you to go back to bed,” Dean said.

“And I told you to tell me if you needed help.”

“I don’t.” Dean pushed Sam’s hand off his shoulder and busied himself with shutting off the faucet. He tried to force his hand steady as he ran it over his wet hair. “I think that can of tuna Ellen used for dinner was just older than we thought.”

Sam pursed his lips, arms crossing over his chest. Dean squeezed past his brother and shuffled back to the bedroom, ignoring the still unsettled feeling in his stomach.

It wasn’t until he got back into the room that he remembered his sheets were too trashed to lay on. He paced to the other side of the bedroom, desperate to shake off the queasiness that still clung to him.

“You need to lie back down,” Sam said.

Dean spun around, nearly too fast for his crap balance. “I haven’t been doing anything but lying around,” he growled.

The rage he wanted to feel just wasn’t there. His shoulders sagged and he leaned back against the dresser.

“I gotta do something, Sammy.” His eyes finally met his brother’s, too desperate to care what they revealed. “I can’t just lie around puking my guts out waiting for the next episode of _This is Your Life, Dean Winchester_. I could barely deal with this shit the first time around.”

“I know, Dean.” Sam sat on the bed across from him and dropped his head. “I know. I’m trying.”

“Don’t. Just don’t. Man, this isn’t on you. I’m just...I’m done.” Dean scrubbed his hand over his face. “Where the hell is Cas, anyway? He should’ve been back by now.”

Sam’s head jerked up. “Cas? Dean, Castiel is...” His expression turned unreadable and his stare became far too intense for Dean’s liking. “Did you talk to him?”

“Uh, yeah. Yesterday, after he healed me from Alastair...or didn’t, I guess. I told you.”

“No, you didn’t. What did Castiel tell you?”

“That he was going to China to pick up whatever the hell mojo to fix this thing. That’s what we’ve been waiting on, remember?” 

“After he healed you from Alastair?” Sam asked.

“Yeah...why do you look like you’re sucking on a....”

Coldness settled over the pit of Dean’s stomach as he watched the sinking expression on his brother’s face. He grabbed hold of the creaky wooden chair and sunk down into it as twisted memories wound in his head.

“Cas is coming back?” Dean asked hoarsely.

Sam just gritted his jaw and squeezed his eyes closed.

“No. He wasn’t just some delusion,” Dean said. “I mean, he felt the same as the rest of this crap, but so does this here and now. He was different than the others. He knew stuff I couldn’t. Man, I learned geography by looking out the window of a car. I don’t know any place in China.”

Sam sighed, his voice quiet. “Did Cas say he was going to visit the monks in mountainous region of Yunnan?” 

“Um...yeah. I guess that was it. How’d you know?”

“Bobby read it out of one of the books. You probably overheard him while you were out of it in the living room. That book was written in the sixteen hundreds. Those monks don’t exist anymore.”

Dean propped his elbows on his knees and rested his suddenly heavy head in his hands, tried to ignore the racing in his heart. “Goddamn it.”

“Dean...”

“Forget it.”

“We’re gonna figure this out. You still got time. I already—”

Dean stood in a surge of motion, slamming the chair back into the wall. “I said, drop it, Sam!” His chest heaved as he turned around. He could still taste blood in his mouth. “I’m done pretending.”

Dean had been a delusional moron. No one was coming with a magical cure. There was no cure, not anymore. There was nothing here but a giant fucking waste of Sam’s time. 

The leviathans were out taking over and Sam was stuck here playing nursemaid while Dean talked to invisible nightmares and puked all over himself. Sam should be out saving the world, doing anything aside from watching him die like this. There were enough dead friends in this house to do that.

He pulled open the dresser drawer before remembering his clothes weren’t in it. He slammed it closed, giving a frustrated huff then turned back around to look for his shirt, which he found rumpled up beside the bed.

Sam put a hand on his shoulder before he could try to get the shirt on. “Dean, just slow down. What’re you doing?”

“I’m gonna find a flashlight and I’m gonna go out and fix that car. Then I’m sticking it to Dick as far as I can.”

“There’s still a chance,” Sam said. “I talked to Garth again.” 

The shirt slipped from Dean’s fingers. He sagged down to sit on the bed beside Sam and tried to make sense of what he’d just heard. “Garth? Oh, thank God. Now I’ll surely be saved.”

He waved off Sam’s glare, snatched his shirt back off the floor and went to work untangling the wadded up mess.

“Come on, Sam, I love the little guy and all in small doses, but why the hell would you call him? Even if the leviathans haven’t gotten to him, the last thing I need is Garth playing his ukulele while I asphyxiate on my own vomit.” 

“His ukulele?”

“Seriously, dude, don’t ask.”

“Yeah, well, anyway, Garth is waiting at the airport for some more antivenins and he’s been talking to some witch doctors that he thinks can maybe help. He and Jody are coming back by as soon as their flight comes in.”

Dean had just gotten the shirt over his head when he stopped to stare at Sam. “What do you mean they’re coming ‘back by’?”

“Just that. They’ve been coming over to check on you and bringing supplies. You don’t remember?”

Dean shook his head as he searched his muddled memory. “You’ve been going out for supplies.”

“Dean, I haven’t left you,” Sam said. 

“Sure, you have. You were out while I was seeing the fire and shooting up the wall.”

“No, I was with you. Jody brought the books and groceries and Garth has been bringing the antivenins. Apparently, he has a special lady that works in the field.”

Dean wanted to argue, but Sam had to be right. There was no way Sam had been driving that busted car anywhere, especially not as much driving as it would have taken to get anywhere from here. 

“It’s okay, Dean. This is gonna get better.”

“Better is for people who aren’t us,” Dean muttered. “I don’t even remember what okay feels like.”

“They’ll be here by this afternoon. Just get some rest.”

“I can’t. I trashed my...dude, are you following me around making my bed?”

While Dean had covered the mess with his sheets, even in the dark, he could tell by a glance that the now smoothly laid out sheets had been replaced.

“That’s not me,” Sam said. “Ellen’s been making your bed.”

“Why? She’s hanging around to clean my sheets?” 

“You Winchesters always were dense as they come.” Dean turned his head to see Ellen standing in the doorway. “You deserve a clean bed and it’s far past time someone took care of you. Yeah, I know, you can take care of yourself. Good for you. You just shouldn’t have to. Listen to your brother now, Dean. You need your rest.”

While it was Ellen saying the words, he heard Mom. He got caught in a fuzzy memory of being sick not long before Sam had been born. He’d thought he’d get in trouble for having made a mess of the bed. They’d heard him trying to climb into the closet to find some clean sheets. 

Mom had scooped him up into her arms and rested him on her swollen belly while his stomach had churned and Dad changed the sheets. It was the last time Dad had been the one cleaning the bed. 

Sam’s voice pulled him back. “Dean, I know you’re mad about Bobby and the others. I should’ve tried harder to tell you again.”

“Dude, I’m not mad.” 

Despite what Sam probably thought, Dean hadn’t spent the afternoon under the tree because he’d been too pissed off to come back inside. He’d just gotten too lost in his head to realize he wasn’t in the house and, at some point, had fallen asleep beside the grave. 

“I’m confused maybe. I don’t know, but honestly, Sam, I’m past caring. After all the stupid ass things you’ve done this isn’t the one I’m gonna die being pissed about.”

Sam obviously wasn’t reading him right because his expression fell. Dean quickly clarified. “I got so many more issues with you. Like that time you put that douche-y MP-whatever in my baby? Unforgivable.”

Sam’s chuckle was laced with weariness, but it was there. “You’re not dying, Dean.”

“Uh huh.”

Dean pushed past his brother and barely pulled back the clean sheets before he collapsed face-first onto the mattress. He buried his face into the pillow. The sheets were pulled over him before he could find the energy to grab them for himself.

~~~

Dean pressed harder against the gushing wound. Hot blood flowed steadily up through his fingers and spilled up over his hands.

“No. You aren’t leaving me again,” Dean choked. “Not now.”

He couldn’t fuck up this bad for what felt like the hundredth time. This was the hell that made everything else incomparable. 

Sam’s life was slipping away, again, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He’d been pinned to a wall, only able to watch as the demons had torn into his brother. They’d jammed the knife into his heart and laughed as it twisted. 

Dean prayed to Castiel and anything else that would listen.

Nothing answered. Nothing but his brother’s ragged gasps, growing further and farther between.

“Sammy? Damn it, Sam!” Dean shook his brother hard.

Sam wouldn’t answer. He wouldn’t open his eyes beyond glazed slits, but he gripped Dean’s jackets so hard it was amazing it didn’t tear. Dean gripped him back even harder. 

They’d made it out onto the porch. Dean pulled Sam closer where he knelt until Sam was draped over his lap, pressed tight against his chest for support as Dean futilely tried to hold it all in.

His mind flashed to Sammy, seven years old with a skinned knee after he’d fallen off a skateboard and Dean had been too slow to catch him. He saw his brother banged up from a skinwalker that Dean hadn’t pulled the trigger on fast enough. Dean felt the dead weight of Sam in his arms after Jake had literally stabbed him in the back.

He was always too late. 

They were pressed so tightly together that Dean felt unmistakably the moment the last blood soaked breath gurgled from his brother’s throat before the impossible silence that followed.

~~~

“What were you dreaming about?”

When Sam asked the question Dean’s heart was still racing in his chest. The sheets were still clutched in his fist. It was cold again. 

Dean made a shoddy effort of hiding his grimace. Sam was confirming Dean’s psychic theory or at least that Sam innately knew what Dean didn’t want to talk about. 

The house and his nightmares and half memories kept twining together into partial realities. He didn’t know which ones to believe. 

His mind drifted to the long hours he’d laid at the precipice of sleeping and waking. He’d watched the sunrise out the window. It wasn’t anything spectacular, not this morning. It had mostly been masked by clouds. 

He’d seen a lot of awesome sunrises. He’d sat at Sam’s side by a dying campfire watching the sun rise over the Olympics. They’d seen it breach the horizon on the outcrop of a rocky beach in Maine and in the desert outside of Reno. Some they’d caught in the car to or from a hunt, or as kids snuggled in the back seat together, half awake as the Impala flew down the interstate heading for yet another strange town.

Dean thought of one of those many sunrises. Dawn had broken over a grassy field, just like the one that surrounded this house. The grasses had nearly been as tall as Sammy, who’d followed on Dean’s heals as they waded through the field, moving as stealthy as soldiers heading into battle. 

The memory edged a smile at the corner of Dean’s lips. 

They’d slipped out of the motel. Usually Dean had been the good son, but this time it had been him who had to twist Sam’s arm to go. Sam had known how pissed Dad would be and how explicit his order not to go had been. 

Dean had known too, but for once, he hadn’t cared. Usually, Dad had been right, but sometimes he’d been wrong. Some things were more important than hunting.

“The fair,” Dean said.

“What?” Sam asked. “The carnival in Medford?”

“With the killer clowns?” Dean pulled his arm from beneath the covers to smack his brother who was sitting on the edge of the bed beside him. “No, when we were kids. That huge fair we went to in Florida.”

“Broward County? Uh yeah...kind of hard to forget. Dean, Dad literally almost killed you for taking me to that thing.”

Dean’s disobedience had resulted in a training lesson that involved dropping him off in the middle of the woods, on top of a mountain. It turned out that Dean’s sense of direction hadn’t been as good as either he or Dad had thought. A park ranger had found him frozen to the bone, nearly dead from exposure.

Dad had flown off the handle when he’d found him in the hospital room. First, he’d yelled at Dean for having got himself lost and not being able to make a decent survival shelter. Then it had been Sam’s fault for slowing down the search and finally he’d turned on the local authorities for their incompetence in running a search party.

Then Dad had done what he hadn’t for years and grabbed Dean so hard he’d thought he would literally crack a rib. Dean had been only half conscious, but he’d found the strength to hug Dad back, losing himself again in the leather and salty tears he’d used to find comfort in.

He’d thought Dad had left him to die, but knew he hadn’t as Dad breathed unsteadily against his ear. It hadn’t changed anything for Sam, but it had made everything okay for Dean. He knew why Dad did it, always had.

And Dean had learned his lesson. After that he’d always paid attention to where he was, could find his way out of any forest and could build a kick ass shelter. Part of it was thanks to Bobby. They’d spent the following summer tracking with him.

Of course, Bobby had torn Dad a new one first. Both he had Sam had thought Dean had brain damage for defending Dad, but they didn’t know how much Dad had beaten himself up for what had happened and Dad hadn’t seen that Sam and Bobby were just looking out for him. 

Sometimes he felt like he was the only one in the family who had seen everyone.

“He was right to be pissed at me, but he was wrong not to let you go.” Dean shrugged against his pillow. “He just couldn’t see you and maybe if he had seen you running around gorging yourself sick on cotton candy...”

Sam snorted. “That was you, Dean.”

“It wasn’t only me.” A soft smile came to Dean’s lips as his fingers played over the amulet at his neck. “Seriously, Sammy. You should’ve seen yourself. Riding any ride you wanted, winning every one of those crap shooting games...you were just a kid. For one day, it hadn’t mattered what was out there or how often we had to move. Dad just didn’t see how bad you needed that.”

“I hated him for that day.”

“I know,” Dean said. “As far as I could tell, you hated him for everything.”

“I used to, but not anymore. I know why he did most of it and I doubt I could’ve done better, but he had no excuse for that night.”

“I disregarded direct orders. I knew the consequences. Seeing you happy meant more than any of that.”

“Dean, I saw him hit you.”

“What?” Dean pushed himself up to lean back against the headboard. “Dad never hit me.” Dean glared at Sam’s look. “Sparring doesn’t count.”

“It does if the guy sparring with you is twice your size, drunk off his ass and sparring with you just because he’s pissed about some stupid crap.”

Dean shook his head. “You got a funny damn memory, dude.”

“One of us does.”

“Is that what you were pissed about?” Dean rolled onto his good side, propping himself up on his elbow. “He shoved me. I tripped.”

“Classic, Dean.”

“Dude, seriously. My shoe lace was untied, which was my own stupid ass fault. After you threw your fit he helped me up and made sure I was okay.”

“And then dumped you off in the middle of nowhere.” Sam sighed. “He shouldn’t have ever touched you like that and you didn’t look surprised so I know it wasn’t the first time. After everything you did for him—”

“I told Dad to go screw himself,” Dean said.

“What?”

“I knew we didn’t have the cash to take you to Disney World like you wanted so I thought the fair would be awesome, but Dad thought it was time for you to grow up. I didn’t…so I might of told him to fuck off.”

“No you didn’t.” Sam smiled despite himself. Sam looked closely into Dean’s eyes. “Seriously?”

Dean laughed. It was a dry, tired, but genuine chuckle. “I was sixteen and suicidal. He moved on me, I took a swing at him, he blocked and shoved me back just to avoid getting nailed in the face.” Dean shook his head. “You didn’t have the market on being pissed off at Dad, you know. Some of us just learned when to shut our cakeholes.”

“I’m not proud of how much I fought with Dad,” Sam said. “I know a lot of it was pointless and stupid and I said so many things I wish I could take back, but some of it needed saying and I wish I’d said something that night.” 

“I’m sorry you hated Dad for that, but giving you that day was one of the best things I could’ve asked for.”

“Thank you.”

“For what?” Dean asked.

“Everything.” Sam patted Dean’s leg and stood up. “Do you want me to bring breakfast up?”

“Don’t bother,” Dean said. 

“You need to eat.”

“I can’t.” Dean’s eyes were earnest as he met Sam’s. “Man, my throat burns. I’m tired of being sick. It’s not like I’m gonna live long enough to starve to death.”

“You will if I have anything to say about it. Come on, Ellen says she’ll make you something easy on the stomach.”

“Yeah, okay, but I can walk to the kitchen. I’ll be down in minute.”

The last thing Dean even wanted to think about was food, but at least it would give Sam and the others something to do. He also didn’t like the idea of Ellen’s ghost stomping up here and reading him the riot act about eating properly.

Dean had almost let his guard down when he heard a voice, deep and more familiar than any other. He heard it half as often as he heard his own voice in his head.

“Is that really how that story of yours went, Dean?”


	8. Chapter 8

_You know you’re walking out on your family, right?_

Ben’s words. Words that Dean had thought to his father, but had never had the guts to say.

He’d told Ben he would understand when he was older. That was just something people said. All that really came clear with age was that no one understood anything.

Dean had been devastated when Dad had walked out on him to hunt the demon alone. He knew Dad had done it to keep him safe, but even though they never talked about it, Dad had known what Sam leaving had done to him.

It had also meant that Dad hadn’t trusted him to get the job done. Despite having given everything, it hadn’t been enough. He wasn’t enough.

One night they’d been doing a hunt like usual. It had been a nasty mess of a hunt that had left Dean with three cracked ribs, but he’d kicked the ghoul’s ass. Dad had even bought him a beer afterwards. 

The next morning, Dean had woken up in a motel room alone. He’d waited over an hour for Dad to get back with coffee until he realized Dad’s bag was gone, but the Impala was still parked outside. Within two hours Dean had started tearing apart the town. There’d been no trace. Dad hadn’t wanted to be found, not by Dean.

At least in his own way, Dad had done it to protect him. Dad had been a hard-assed bastard half the time, most the rest of the time he just hadn’t been there, but he’d never given up on his family.

Dean had been so sure he could do it better. He hadn’t had a clue and in the end, he’d abandoned his own family with Lisa and Ben just because it had been easier. He’d stripped their memories when it had been his he’d wanted cleansed.

_Why won’t you come home?_

Dean had lost his home with Mom. He sure hadn’t deserved one when Ben had asked him that question.

“Where’s Dad?”

Growing up, Sam had asked him so many times. Dean had gotten to the point that he’d wanted to scream.

He saw Sammy, lying on his stomach at the foot of his bed. Dean pulled his knees up to his chest, eyes focused on the cartoons that played on the crappy television, pretending he wasn’t waiting on edge for the phone to ring.

“He’ll be back soon,” Dean told his brother.

It was a rehearsed line, spoken over and over. Sam shouldn’t have had to wonder where his dad was, but it was better than actually knowing.

Dad had said he would call, but the first sign of him was the rumble of the Impala out in the parking lot. Dean scrambled off the bed as relief coursed through his veins. He unhooked the security chain just in time for the door to slam open.

He moved out of the way as Dad pushed past him and dropped the weapons bag on the floor. Dean hustled to zip up the bag before Sam could see inside, while Dad collapsed into the corner chair, clutching his side.

“You got anything else in the car that needs to come in?” Dean asked.

“Just get Sam to bed,” Dad said with an edge of irritation, pulling a flask from his jacket. “I can’t deal with you right now.”

_Whatever I did, I’m sorry._

Ben came back into focus, desperate eyes looking at him, wondering what he’d done to chase Dean away. It was the most ridiculous thing Dean had ever heard. Ben had never done anything wrong. He wasn’t like Dean.

Dean had never wanted to make anyone feel like his father had made him feel.

When Dean returned to the room and looked up, Dad was still standing over him. He looked impatient, like he was waiting for an answer. Dean didn’t know what the question was, but Dad’s expression said it wouldn’t matter. Whatever Dean answered would be wrong.

“What?” Dean asked.

“That story you just told your brother,” Dad said. “It’s funny, because that’s not the conversation I remember. As far as I recall, Sam hadn’t seen the worst of it.”

There might be a lot Dean wasn’t telling Sam. There was a lot he never would tell him because it wasn’t what mattered.

Maybe Dean hadn’t told Dad to fuck off and maybe Dad had taken him out back. All that mattered was that Dad and he had both done what they’d had to and they’d both done it for Sam. 

“It was the first and last time you talked back.” Dad stood at the end of the bed with his hands in his pockets, deceptively casual as he evaluated Dean. “I had a temper to put yours to shame. How many times have you hit Sam just because you were angry? Did he deserve it? You sure did.”

Dean sat up in the bed, stuck between jumping to his father’s defense and defending himself. “He was drunk and you’re not him.”

“Drinking is a convenient excuse, isn’t it? You’ve used it enough to know. Did you really believe it was the bottle and not just how goddamn tired I was of you?”

Sometimes Dean was sure of the answer, other times he wasn’t. He knew Dad had loved him before the fire and that he’d needed him after. He just wasn’t sure if need and love were the same thing or if it even mattered.

“Get on your feet, Dean.”

Dad’s order was crisp and familiar. Those words had sent him scrambling up and out of bed plenty of times before. Even now they made his muscles coil, his body instinctively wanting to jump to attention even when his mind knew this couldn’t be real. He was mostly sure it wasn’t real.

“I said get on your goddamn feet. Now.”

A hard hand grabbed the scruff of his neck and dragged him over the side of the bed. He struggled to get his feet beneath him before hitting the floor.

Dean remembered the last time he had been lazy enough that Dad had needed to manhandle him out of bed. It had only happened once before he’d told Dad he had the flu. He knew better than to force a repeat performance.

He fought to catch his breath as he fumbled to pull on his jeans. Dean was on autopilot as he threw on his t-shirt, grimacing as it jostled the cotton over his bandages. He was tying his boots by the time he looked up to see Dad standing by the bedroom window looking out towards the driveway.

“I gave you a perfectly good car and you dumped it for that piece of shit?”

The scornful tone froze Dean where he stood, staring down at the floorboards. He tried blinking, wishing for Alastair to return, but Dad remained.

“Eyes on me when I’m talking to you.” It was a biting order as familiar as the back of Dean’s own hand.

Dean managed to swallow the ‘yes, sir’ on his tongue, but couldn’t stop himself from looking up at the cruel perversion of his father. The man standing there was cold and hard without the silver lining of warmth and concern that had kept Dean fighting to keep his family together.

Dad moved in close, forcing Dean to back up against the wall. Dean could smell the leather of his jacket and the residual taint of motor oil. When Dad exhaled, he could smell the whiskey on his breath.

There were beads of sweat on his dad’s face and the anger tinting his skin pink. It was Dad on the edge of exploding while trying his damndest to keep it under control. Dean didn’t deserve for him to hold back.

“A car, Dean. You couldn’t keep track of a damn car. How could I possibly have thought you could keep Sam safe?”

Dean wanted to disappear into the wall as Dad asked the question Dean ceaselessly asked himself. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t Dad. The sentiment was true regardless of the source.

“Who is buried out back?”

A sinking feeling pulled him down until, with that one question, the world dropped out from beneath him.

~~~

At first it was an inkling that quickly turned sour and brought pangs of panic. Dean had been used to ignoring the thundering of his heart and the pumping of adrenaline since the edges of his memory, even more so since coming to this house.

He’d come to feed off fear. Half the time, he needed it to feel alive, but this wasn’t only unease. This wasn’t a call to fight. It was dread strong enough to stop him from taking one more step for fear of what he might find.

It was like being four again and afraid to open a bathroom door in a strange motel room that smelled weird and sounded wrong. Monsters had been hiding in every shadow, but hunters didn’t run. Dad had taught him that from day one.

They did make strategic retreats and Dean might be better off making one now, but his feet moved forward because there wasn’t anything in a damned closet that couldn’t be settled with a gun.

He jerked open the creaky accordion door and took a step back. It wasn’t Alastair or Dad or a yawning pit of red-hot torment. It was just an empty closet with a cracked wall and cobwebs thick enough to catch mice.

On second look, the closet wasn’t completely empty. The cobwebs had been knocked aside in one corner where a pile of clothes had been thrown. He nudged it with his boot, half expecting the snake to leap out of it. Nothing happened.

Dean looked over his shoulder before lifting the bundle, cringing as he pushed past the cobwebs that stuck to his forearm. He wasn’t sure what a banana spider looked like, but nothing jumped out and bit him.

He turned the heavy fabric over in his hands and with a shake, unfurled the jacket. Nearly half of it, starting at the left side of the chest, was dark with dried blood. From the amount of blood that had sunk into the fabric, it had clearly been a fatal wound.

When he held it out, he could see the torn hole at the upper side of the blood pattern, where the heart would have been. He stuck his finger into it, gauging the size of the blade used.

“I thought you were coming down for breakfast?”

Dean turned around, nearly dropping the jacket in the process. Sam stood in the doorway watching him. His brother was uneasy and, as Dean looked back at him, he identified the source of his dread.

He was holding the same jacket Sam was wearing.

The blood pattern looked so damn familiar because it was the one he’d been watching spread over Sam’s chest for the last few days. It was the one he’d tried to stop up last night in his dream.

“Dad told me to check the closet,” Dean said. He held the jacket up to Sam. “You wanna explain this?”

“Dad? He’s not here, Dean. You’re having another hallucination. Just come downstairs.”

“No.” Dean jerked back when Sam tried to grab his arm. “Not until you tell me what’s going on. Damn it, Sam! I saw you die in this thing. I keep seeing you...”

“I don’t know what to tell you. Yeah, it’s my jacket, but...”

Dean walked away from Sam and started digging into the jacket’s pocket. Sam’s long stride easily caught up with his shuffled steps.

“Just forget about it,” Sam said.

Sam reached out to snatch the jacket away. Dean had always won keep away games because Sam had been short until after Dean had dropped out of high school and even after that, Dean was usually quicker on his feet. Of course, he’d usually given Sam whatever they were fighting over in the end.

Only this wasn’t a game, Dean wasn’t any longer taller and he could barely stand on his own feet. Sam ended up with the jacket, but Dean was still the expert pickpocket. He came away with an ID card in his hand. A moment later, it slipped from his fingers.

The FBI badge, the partner for the one that had been in Dean’s jeans, lay between them on the floor. It had landed face up with Sam’s picture smeared with blood.

“Dean, I can explain.”

He didn’t even hear his brother. Dean was already out of the room, half jogging, half stumbling his way down the stairs. He kept his hands over the railings, using the support to catch himself when he tripped on the steps.

By the time he reached the kitchen, he felt as if he was on the verge of heart attack. His lungs were refusing to pull in air, but he didn’t stop until the toe of his boot caught on the throw rug in front of the kitchen table.

“Settle down there.” Bobby was suddenly beside him, grasping Dean’s arm. “Whatever you think’s on your tail ain’t.”

Dean barely saw Bobby. All he saw was old blood that streaked the floor beneath the shifted throw rug. He held his breath as he waited for the hallucination to pass, for reality to catch up with him, but nothing in the room shifted.

“Who’s in that grave, Bobby?”

It wasn’t the question Dean had needed to ask, but it was the closest to it that he could force out of his mouth. The look on Bobby’s face was answer enough.

“No.” Dean shook his head and backed away from Bobby’s touch. “He’s not...”

Ellen had turned around from the stove, wearing the same damn expression of pity that Bobby was. “Dean, sweetie, you just sit down before you hurt yourself.”

He didn’t sit down. His mind had shut down. He was deaf to the pleas of the ghosts calling out after him or his desire to collapse as a storm of endorphins pushed his body beyond what it was actually capable of.

Dean plowed through the field to the oak tree and stopped to stand over the grave as he fought to draw air into his chest. His boot sunk into the exposed soil far enough to leave an imprint. The boot’s cleats matched with the other prints already there, hardened into the soil after having been laid in mud.

Rain was falling again, filling the boot prints and taking him back to another cold afternoon when the rain had been pouring down.

His clothes had clung to his shivering body. The legs of his pants had been coated in mud from having worked his way six feet down into the earth. Water puddled, splashing mucky soil up around him. It was cold and dark and Dean hadn’t wanted to leave Sam there alone.

He remembered waking up in a coffin, tearing his nails ripping away the wood slats of the pine box. Without it, the weight of the earth had collapsed around him.

He hadn’t even had a box to leave Sam in so he had stood at the bottom of the grave, clutching his little brother’s stone-cold body in his arms. He hadn’t planned on climbing back out.

Exhaustion and chill bordering on hypothermia had brought him to his knees, urged him to lay down. Just for a minute. Just for however long it took for Sam to get up.

But something had drawn him back to the surface.

The rain washed the tears down his cheeks as Dean looked over to the shovel he’d fallen asleep next to the other day. He wasn’t surprised to see that it was their missing shovel.

Dean felt Sam’s presence beside him. “You’re dead.” He wasn’t sure how he managed to say the words. “How could you not tell me?”

“You’re the one who buried me. You knew. You knew for a while and then one day you just woke up and started talking to me like I was really there and you started getting better.”

Every part of Dean was too numb to process anything. He knew it would all hit him soon, but right now he still had the benefit of shock to keep him from imploding. It was like he was talking about someone else. 

When Dean spoke, his voice was distant. “I finally lost my mind and you call that getting better?”

“It was a lot better than you were.”

Sam’s tone was heavy enough that Dean hadn’t needed to ask exactly what he meant. He didn’t want to know.

“What were you thinking?” Dean asked.

“You needed me. You said it yourself. You wouldn’t have buried me if you wanted me gone.”

Dean could pretend he didn’t know why he’d done it, but he did. Buried didn’t mean gone. People came back from being buried. Only fire took them away.

“Of course I don’t want you gone, but who the fuck cares what I need?” Dean asked. “You should be off floating on a cloud with Jessica, not throwing your soul away down here.”

“I had everything I wanted here with you, Dean. I’m really okay.”

“Okay? Seriously? Sam, you’re dead! Apparently you’ve been dead for months. You’re lucky you even remember what you were, let alone who. You’re not okay. I’m gonna die and you, and Bobby, Ellen and Jo...you’re all gonna be left here haunting this damn rat hole watching my corpse rot until there’s nothing left of any of us.”

Sam shook his head. “Mom’s spirit stayed in our old house for over twenty years. You gonna tell me she was any different than you remember?”

“No...but that was different.”

“Because it was Mom?” Sam asked. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. I’m not staying behind. I told you I wasn’t leaving and I meant it.”

“You can’t just decide when you’re gonna hop aboard the train.”

“Let’s just say we earned ourselves special passes,” Sam said.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Dean knew the words that were going to come out of Sam’s mouth before he said them because Sam, dead or alive, was a Winchester. Sometimes Dean wondered if their family had only been put on this earth to sell off their souls.

“I made a deal.”

“And when has that ever not fucked us over?” Dean asked.

“No more demon deals. I get to stay and watch your back. That’s it. It was a favor from Tess.”

“The reaper? How is that not exactly like a demon deal? And once I’m gone? What? Are you gonna get your ass tossed back in the Cage?”

“I’m not going back to hell, Dean, and neither are you. There’s no catch. Tess just thought we earned a break. The deal was I got to wait for you as long as I made sure you came along when it was your time. I told her we’d all go.”

All of them. All the spirits of dead family and friends who had somehow felt the need to hold back on his account like somehow he was worth waiting on heaven for. 

Exhaustion struck Dean like a freight train. His knees buckled. Sam tried to catch him, but Dean shoved him away. At least he tried to. Instead, his hand went straight through his brother’s chest.

Dean fell forward onto the ground. He didn’t even try to catch himself. Sam tried to pull him up, but Dean turned away. 

“I can’t...” Dean tried to suck in air that wouldn’t come. “Just get out of here.”

“Dean...”

“Just go!”

Dean’s attempt at a shout came out as a hoarse rasp that tore at his sore throat. He coughed, curling into himself as he lay on the ground, half on top of the grave.

The moment Sam flickered away Dean wanted to yell for him to come back, but he needed a minute. He needed space to try to jam everything into place like somehow time could fix what he had broken.

A cold with more chill than the wind settled over him. He exhaled, watching the fog of his breath dissipate into the air.

“You did everything you could.”

Dean shifted where he lay as Jo’s voice filtered over the breeze. Heavy raindrops battered the ground beyond the grave. The dense canopy of the tree caught a lot of them, but Dean’s shirt was still soaked and water droplets still dripped from the tips of his hair while Jo sat beside him untouched.

“Like I did for you?” Dean asked.

She set her hand his shoulder. It felt solid even when he knew nothing was really there. “You gotta stop blaming yourself, Dean.”

Everyone kept telling him that, but they didn’t understand. From the day Dad had set Sammy into his arms, the responsibility had always been his. He was so used to being the one it all fell on. He didn’t know how to be any other way.

“Has it really been months?” Dean’s gaze had drifted back to the grave. His hand pressed into the cold soil. “Have I really been alone all this time?”

“No, you were never alone, but I don’t know how long it’s been since Sam. Time doesn’t matter so much anymore. You don’t look all that much older, though. Just tired.”

He was tired. The kind of tired that didn’t go away with sleep. He didn’t remember what it was like not to be weary.

“Why are you still here, anyway? You gotta have better things to do with eternity than haunt my ass. Who sent you this time?”

“Nobody sent me,” Jo said. “Osiris released me. God, what I almost did to you...and you didn’t even try to stop me.”

“I had it coming.”

Jo rolled her eyes. “That’s crap and you know it.”

He forced his aching shoulders to push him up off the ground so he was sitting beside her. The grave’s dirt clung to his shirt and was smeared over the side of his face. He looked down at the mud on his hands.

“I told you, I’m one hundred percent pure crap, but I should’ve been able to protect you.”

“Oh, will you shut up? You’re impossible. Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean that macho bullshit doesn’t still piss me off. You gotta let it go.”

~~~

The porch steps were still moist from the afternoon’s rain. The wetness soaked into the denim of Dean’s jeans.

He slumped further against the railing. The weathered wood creaked against his weight. His legs lay sloppily over the steps, his arms loose at his side.

The blood on his knuckles had caked dry. His skin was scraped raw and bruised to the bone. The oak tree hadn’t given a rat’s ass about his fury, but half-assed punches to a still target were the only fight he could manage.

It wasn’t only that he didn’t have the strength. There was nothing else to fight. Nothing he could do to fix this.

The breeze that rustled the tall grasses sent a chill over him and raised the hair at the nape of his neck. His eyelids were too heavy to hold open, but he struggled against the weight, unwilling to let them fall completely closed.

The only light seeped out the window behind him. Clouds had swallowed the stars. Beyond the reach of the light, land bled into sky and it was all black. 

Anxiety hung in his chest, pure animal instinct keeping him on a razor’s edge when the rest of him didn’t care. Despite his slouched posture, his shoulders were tight, eyes scanning the edge of the light’s reach.

He could see them there, hellhounds pushing through the grass. Their hot, putrid breath fogged the cold night’s air. He knew they saw him too.

Dean couldn’t count the number of times he and Sam had been here. Looking out into a cold night and silently sitting at each other’s side. His mind wouldn’t let him believe that Sam was gone. He still felt him the same as ever.

“Dean, you gotta come inside. The flight was delayed, but Jody and Garth are on their way.”

“It’s too late.”

Before Sam could argue, Dean wiped his fingers over his lips and held his hand up. The light spilling from the house caught the dark crimson smeared over his fingertips. He’d been sitting out there coughing up blood into the old flowerbed.

“I’m not gonna just watch you die again,” Sam said.

“I did.” Dean wiped his fingers clean on his jeans. “I just watched you.”

“No, you didn’t.” Sam sat down beside him, looking out into the night. “You did everything you could to stop it.”

“I watched you die then when those demons came back for me, I tortured them in the cellar. I tore Kathy apart.”

He remembered now. He remembered all of it. Losing Sam then losing himself. Then suddenly Sam had been there again and it had been easier to believe the lie.

“Kathy was already dead. I was there, Dean. I saw the whole thing,” Sam said. “You’d just finished burying me and they jumped you. They dragged you into the cellar. You were the one they were torturing.”

Dean nodded as another piece clicked. “You undid the ropes.”

“Yeah. This ghost thing was kind of like riding a bike after that Ghost 101 training that kid gave us in Wyoming.”

“You always were a quick study when you wanted to be.” Dean lifted his head from the railing and turned towards Sam. “Do you ever wonder if we just made it worse?”

“Dean, I can’t even begin to count how many lives we’ve saved and, come on, we stopped the apocalypse.”

“You stopped the apocalypse. I brought the fucking thing on.”

“You didn’t know,” Sam said.

“But that’s just the thing. When it was my turn to go at those demons in the cellar… It was like part of me missed that. If Alastair had told me what I was signing up for, I don’t know if I wouldn’t have still picked up that razor.”

“I know.”

Dean shook his head. “Mackey was right. I botched plenty of hunts. So many people died because we were in over our heads.”

“Most people wouldn’t have even tried. You only remember the ones that went bad. What about all the ones that went right?”

Dean shrugged. “You remember when I said I wished I couldn't feel anything?”

“Kind of hard to forget.”

“Careful what you wish for, Sammy.” Dean bit his lip as the unnoticed tears slid down his cheeks. “It feels like I haven’t felt anything forever. I miss being angry.”

“I miss you being happy.”

“Were we?” Dean asked.

“I think so.”

It was hard to imagine it now, but he knew Sam was right. They’d had a hell of a lot of good times. For Dean, it had been good enough. He’d known where to find fun where he could get it and he’d made it work. It just hadn’t been what he’d wanted for Sam. 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a better life.” Dean rubbed his hand over his face.   
“You deserved anything but this crap.”

“I know what you did for me growing up. You did make it better and getting to save lives with you was worth way more than spending decades pushing papers in a law firm.”

“You could’ve had a family,” Dean said.

“I did.”

~~~

People were talking. Their voices were distant and Dean couldn’t make out what they were saying. He should probably open his eyes, but his eyelids were too heavy. He shifted in the bed.

“He’s coming to. Hey, Dean?”

It was a woman, her voice vaguely familiar. She put her hand on him and gently shook his arm. The touch was heavy and firm. Her fingers were warm. It felt so strange it pulled him back towards consciousness.

When his eyes opened, his bleary vision struggled to assign a name to the scrawny face staring down at him. It sure wasn’t a woman.

“I don't mean to be critical, partner, but you've looked better.”

When Dean’s voice came it sounded foreign. "Garth?” Dean let his head fall back onto the pillow. “Oh, God. Don’t tell me you’re haunting me too.”

“That’s a negative, compadre.” Garth dug into his pocket and pulled out an EMF that fired to brilliant red the moment he flipped it on. “But a whole lot of something sure is.”

Dean’s vision focused to see his brother at his side. Bobby, Ellen and Jo all stood around the bed as Garth’s EMF blared. He selfishly felt relief at the confirmation that they were really here. It wasn’t as if this moment felt any more real than any of the others, but he knew for a fact he wouldn’t be imagining Garth at his death bed.

When his head turned to the other side he saw the owner of the woman’s voice. Sheriff Mills stood beside him. Her fingers wrapped around a tissue, her eyes were moist. She tried to smile at him, but there was too much sadness on her face.

“What’s wrong?” Dean asked.

She sniffled and almost laughed. Her hand rubbed over his hair. The touch of real fingers against his scalp sent a tingle through his body while the gesture shot confusion through him.

Sam had worked with the sheriff while Dean had been tracking Cronus through 1944 with Elliot Ness, but Dean barely knew Jody, yet she was standing at his bedside crying. He wasn’t sure if that or the fact that part of his life had been spent in 1944 with Elliot Ness was stranger.

“Seriously,” Dean said. “Why are you guys here?”

"’Cause your ghosty friends sent another buttload of text messages saying you needed Gu poison antidote stat,” Garth said.

Dean quirked a weary brow at Sam. His brother shrugged innocently back at him.

He’d thought he’d made it clear that they were done looking for a cure. Dean was ready to go. He’d been ready for a long time. He had only been holding out for Sam. 

“But...I’m afraid I’ve not come bearing epic news,” Garth said. 

The statement didn’t stir an emotional reaction in Dean either way, but he could see the disappointment on Sam’s face. Dean understood, he knew what he’d feel if the news were about Sam. 

“Well, I did bring something. Never come to a party empty handed I always say...it sounds like a good thing to say, anyway.” Garth pulled a syringe from his jacket pocket and set it on the table beside the bed. “It’s loaded with a venom cocktail that I’m told could fell a large herd of wild jackalopes.”

Dean looked at the syringe with mild disinterest. “So you came to play Doctor Kevorkian?”

“No, that’s the cure...maybe, kind of sort of. The witch doctor said these things are real precise. With Gu, you got one kind of poison in you, you take another to counteract it. Then they cancel each other out. But if you don’t know what’s in there...” Garth’s eyes drifted to the small trash can Dean had been coughing blood into. “Or if you’ve already started bleeding inside then, things can get kind of ugly.”

“Uglier than choking to death on your own blood?” Dean asked.

He knew full well there were worse ways to go. He asked it for the benefit of all the unsettled faces Garth didn’t realize were staring at him.

“From what the guy told me, you’d just be really happy once you got to the choking. You see, if it don’t work, it just amps everything up. Wish I had better news. Oh, he did also give me this one...it’s in one of these pockets here.” Garth patted his jacket until he found what he was looking for and pulled out another syringe. “It won’t fix anything, but it’ll make you feel okay for a little while.”

“Dean, if you’re going to die anyway, you might as well try the cure,” Jody said. His answer must have been clearly written over his face because she didn’t wait for Dean to say it before turning to Garth. “What if he takes both? He could dose with one and knock the pain out with the other.”

“I asked just that,” Garth said. “Witchy guy said there was a one in a million chance it might work, which if you think about it, isn’t horrible odds. Or it might just fry his system.”

“I’m not gonna end up a damn vegetable,” Dean said.

“Sorry, that’s the best sales pitch I got,” Garth said. “Let me tell you, it was way better than Mr. Doom and Gloom’s. I guess the thing is, once the Gu really settles in, it starts breaking down your organs...you know eating stuff. So even if we had one formulated right, he said once the blood starts coming it’s too late to fix what the worm-y things already ate.”

Dean turned his head to glance over the syringes, before tapping the second one Garth had laid down. “What’s this one really buy me?”

“A few good hours? It should stop the pain some and clear your head. You know, long enough to throw a going away party.”

“Then it all comes back?” Dean asked.

“Afraid so. It kind of stuns the worms, but once they build up a resistance they get back to business. If you don’t take the venom, I’d say you still got a few days or a week with injections and transfusions.”

Dean wasn’t even going to respond to that possibility because it wasn’t one. Unless they could get him well enough to fight, there was no reason to hang at death’s door for a week just so he could loose what was left of his mind. 

“Okay.” Dean looked back to Garth. “Thanks. Sam told me what you guys have been doing for me. You didn’t have to help.” 

“It was no problemo. Your haunted house put in the orders. We were just delivering.” Garth looked over the syringes. “I’ll keep looking.”

Dean shook his head. “No, man, don’t bother.”

“So what can we do for you here?” Jody asked.

“Nothing. I’m good.”

“We’re not just going to leave you here, Dean,” Jody said. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

The shadow of a smile came to his lips. “I’m not. But if you guys could...”

“Say no more,” Garth said. “I’ll be back to give you a proper sending off. And Sam, and Bobby...and whoever all else you got hanging around here. You’re a lucky guy, Dean. Aside from the...you know dying thing.”

Dean glanced around the full room. “Yeah, I guess I am. You keep the fires burning for us.”

Garth stood from the chair and wiped his hand over his eyes. “Oh man, I hate goodbyes.”

Dean lifted his hand to shake Garth’s and probably shouldn’t have been surprised when the guy leaned over to hug him instead. Dean was too lost in the sensation of feeling a warm body to even push him off.

“It’s okay.” Dean settled back down into his pillow, exhausted from the simple movements. He waited for his head to stop spinning before talking again. “So Sam said he and Bobby left you guys everything we got on the leviathans.”

“And the list of all Bobby’s old contacts and some angel in a crazy hospital,” Jody said. She squeezed Dean’s shoulder. “Don’t you worry. We’re on this. You guys already did all the leg work. We’ll let Dick know this one is from you.”

Cutting out of the fight early wasn’t what Dean had wanted, but he’d known a long time ago it would never be over. There would always be another fight. He just had to admit that he wasn’t always going to be around to fight it. 

Dean closed his eyes for longer than he meant to. A cool breeze brushed his arm and he opened eyes to see Sam standing over him. Garth and Jody had gone. He had to look to the syringes on the table to confirm they had really been there at all. 

Dean’s gaze shifted to Bobby and the others. “You go ahead and head up. Sam and I are right behind you.”

“You sure, Dean?” Bobby asked. 

“Yeah, I just want a little more time with my brother.”

Bobby nodded and stepped forward, he set his hand on Dean’s cheek. “That’s all right, son, but not a one of us is budging until we’re sure you’ve finally got your head on straight.”

“You’re not dead because of me.” Dean looked past Bobby. “None of you are. I still don’t know why you stayed, but I get the rest.”

“You’re family and it wouldn’t matter if you weren’t. You deserved a hell of a lot more than what we were able to give you. And, Dean?”

“Yeah, Bobby?”

“You know your daddy would’ve been here if he could. He had a hard time showing it, but there wasn’t anything he loved more than you boys. We were both damn proud of you, Dean.”

Dean closed his eyes and nodded. He knew Bobby couldn’t actually speak for Dad, but the words were all he’d needed hear. 

They were enough to remind him of the love in Dad’s eyes when he’d said goodbye, right before he’d sold his soul for Dean. At the time, he’d been too distracted by Dad’s finals words, telling him he might have to kill Sam, that he hadn’t heard the rest. 

Dean had seen that love again after Dad had clawed his way out of hell. He’d seen it in a hundred other small touches, tears and rare smiles. Dad had loved them. He’d just been scared and angry and none of it had been because of Dean. 

He set his hand over Bobby’s, hoping to convey what words couldn’t. Bobby hadn’t been a replacement for Dad, but he had been everything Dean had needed. 

~~~

Dean held the pistol in his hand. The weight had been familiar since he was a kid. It fit like it had been made for him. He was intimately familiar with the click of the safety and exact amount of pressure it took to squeeze off a shot. He could field strip it in twenty-two seconds flat. There was no target he couldn’t hit.

He’d known there was something he could do right when Dad had given him that gun, not just let him borrow the old pistol, but had actually gone out and bought him his own. That year, Dad had actually remembered his birthday.

Guns gave him safety and pride and purpose. And he would never fire one again, not for anything of use.

Thirty minutes earlier, he’d blasted out the lamp when he’d thought a hellhound was coming for Sam. Now Dean was laboring just to breathe as his brother’s hand rested on his shoulder.

Sam had shot him up with whatever Garth had brought. It had numbed his body, but his mind had been slower to catch up and he was still too weak to pretend anything was okay.

Dean’s hand squeezed around the pistol one last time before he raised it to remove the clip. He set both pieces down the on the dresser. His fingers lingered over the ivory handle.

“I know you never wanted this life,” Dean said. “Hunting with me—”

“Was the best thing I could’ve done,” Sam said.

Dean looked up startled. “Come again?”

“Dean, come on, we were superheroes.”

The corner of Dean’s lips turned up. “We kind of were, weren’t we? Kind of sucky ones, but yeah.”

“I think we were pretty cool.”

“Well, yeah, you were,” Dean said. “You had super powers. Dark, demonic freaky ass ones, but you got the job done.”

“You didn’t need them.”

“Whatever.” Dean turned from the dresser and headed for the bedroom door. “You’re just sucking up ‘cause now you know you’re gonna be stuck with me for the rest of eternity.”

“Hey, I was the one that made the deal.”

Their shoulders brushed as they walked down the hall together. Dean stopped at the top of the stairs and settled down onto the floor. The light was too bright and the weight of the air too heavy on his shoulders. 

“You doing okay?” Sam asked. 

“Yeah. Pain’s better, I guess, and I don’t think I’ve seen anything that’s not here for a whole fifteen minutes.”

What the injection had really done was quell the nausea in his stomach. He’d stopped gagging up blood and couldn’t even feel the little bastards squirming around anymore. 

Sam sat down beside him. Dean schooched over on the step to make room, but glared at him. “What’re you doing? Get off your ass and get my damn slinky.”

“Your what?”

“My monster rainbow slinky,” Dean said. “It’s in my bag downstairs.”

“That piece of crap I got you at Plucky’s? You actually kept it?”

“Dude, that thing is gold. These stairs have been a pain in my ass since we got here. It’s about time they did something useful.” 

Sam laughed. “You’re such a freak.”

“Takes one to know one.” Dean clapped his hands. “Come on, Sammy, the clock’s ticking here.”

Dean watched Sam go down the stairs. He realized now that Sam’s movements were silent because Sam wasn’t actually here, but at the same time he was. 

Sam might have left for Stanford, but he’d signed up to spend the rest of forever with him. Dean finally got that he wasn’t what Sam had been trying to ditch all these years. 

His fingers were playing over the amulet at his chest when Sam appeared back beside him.

“Awesome. Give me.” Dean held his hands up to snatch the over-sized slinky from his brother. “I wanted one of these since the first time we’d gone to Plucky’s.”

The Impala was big, but it wasn’t big enough to lug toys around in. They’d had to choose between toys and guns and most toys didn’t stop zombies. 

Dean stopped in the middle of centering the slinky on the step as he thought of the Impala. It was everything their lives had been and it was something Dad had given him. He still didn’t even know why. 

Dean had wanted it more than anything, but he’d never even thought to ask. He’d never so much as said a word about it, but somehow Dad had just known. 

He focused back on what was here with him and what his brother had given him. Dean pulled up the edge of the slinky with the precision he would have used to arm a crossbow. 

“Now you gotta do this just right...” Dean pulled his hands back as the slinky crawled its way down the stairs in a riot of fluctuating color. “Check out that magic.”

Dean leaned back against the wall, looking up to tell Sam to go get it for him, but his brother was already at the bottom of the stairs. He got a couple more epic runs in before he got tired of sitting and thought he’d be okay standing. 

He was wrong. Dean barely made it to his feet before the strength in his legs gave out. He couldn’t tell which way was up enough to catch himself, but he didn’t have to. 

''I gotcha," Sam said.

Dean relaxed against his brother’s support. “I know.”

He should have known all along.


	9. Chapter 9

The afternoon was quiet, just the buzzing of insects and Dean’s labored breaths. Sam couldn't feel the heat of the sun on his skin or the wind in his hair, but he knew Dean could, at least for a little while longer.

Dean sat beside him on the porch swing and the world stretched out around them. There were no signs of anyone else, but Sam knew that beyond these fields the world moved on. 

He’d watched it continue on around him. People had flown by going to and from work. They hadn’t even known he was there, but that wasn’t what bothered him. It was that they hadn’t seen Dean either. 

For months, Sam had had nothing to do but watch his brother. There was so much he’d never seen in life. When he’d been alive, he’d been another one of those people rushing around Dean without really looking.

Dean had always just been there. Sam had been studying his big brother for as long as he could remember, but it was different from the outside looking in. He’d never realized how badly Dean had wanted just a simple acknowledgment that he’d done right or how much he would do without even a thank you. 

Sam rocked the swing gently as his brother hovered somewhere between sleep and waking. Whatever Garth had brought Dean, seemed to numb the pain. Dean’s expression was weary, but relaxed. He didn’t look like he was suffering, not like he had been.

His freckles stood out harshly against his pale skin. Sam had loved teasing Dean about them. He’d always wondered if Mom had had them, too. 

Dean was trembling and his lips were moistened with crimson. There was no mistaking that his body was on the verge of collapse. 

Garth was right that in a hospital, Dean could hold out a little longer, but Dean didn’t want to be in a hospital and Sam didn’t any longer think he should be. It wouldn’t change the end and it just wasn’t Dean.

Sam couldn’t save his brother, but he could give him the ending he wanted. He’d been watching Dean die for months now, long before the Gu poisoning. As hard as it was for Sam to accept, he knew Dean was ready for peace. So was he.

Dean stirred beside him. His lashes fluttered as he looked around them, taking in their surrounds. He’d been pretty out of it when Sam had brought him outside. 

Dean’s gaze settled on the driveway. He blinked, obviously not believing what he saw. Sam knew how that was, not being able to trust his own senses. He should tell Dean it was real, but he was too lost in taking in Dean’s hopeful expression. 

“Is that my baby?” Dean asked.

“Yeah, Jody drove it over for you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wasn’t ready,” Sam said.

“I am.”

Sam hadn’t had to talk to Dean to know it was going to be their last ride. Dean had already mentioned trying to jump start the dying Tempo they’d driven over in. It wasn’t enough to just be outside of the house. Dean needed to be on the road. That was home.

Sam could see that Dean was struggling harder to breathe and the grimace when Dean sat up straighter, hand clutching his stomach. What they’d given him was wearing off and, if they stayed here, soon the hallucinations would return. 

“I know, Dean. Me too.” 

Sam helped Dean off the porch swing that Sam had never really walked away from. He’d stood by it for hours that afternoon he’d died. Sam had let go of his body, but Dean had refused to. 

Dean hadn’t been able to consciously hear him at that point, but he’d obviously heard him on some level because he had responded to Sam’s coaxing with actions. He was just grateful that his brother, who thought everyone was out to get him, had earned the respect of reapers, and on some level, even Death himself. 

“You’ll make sure I don’t hit anyone?” Dean asked as Sam helped him to settle behind the wheel. 

Sam shook his head, not because he wouldn’t make sure there weren’t any bystanders, but because he couldn’t figure out how Dean had convinced himself that he was nothing but a cold-blooded killer. 

“It’ll be fine,” Sam said.

Dean sprawled over the seat then straightened up. He breathed deep as his hands roamed over the car’s dash like he was greeting a long lost lover.

“Oh, baby, I missed you.” A smile laced Dean’s lips as Sam turned the key for him and the engine roared to life. “Now that’s how a car’s supposed to sound.”

Dean coughed as he leaned forward. For a second, Sam wasn’t sure they’d make it out of the driveway, but Dean hadn’t collapsed. He was digging in the cassette box beneath the seat. 

Sam helped him to sit back up and guided his hand to slide in the tape. When he hit play, Don McLean’s American Pie started to play over the speakers. 

Dean had been driving long before he’d actually gotten a driver’s license. Technically, neither of them had ever had a legitimate license, but they’d had this cassette when Dad had first let Dean and him drive in the Impala alone. 

Sam had been a teenager, trying to be normal. He was in between that age of worshiping the ground Dean walked on and wanting to walk for himself. He’d been too cool to sing with his brother, but Dean had kept singing anyway until Sam finally broken down and joined in. 

Dean had taught him to drive that summer and taken the fall with Dad when Sam had broken out the Impala’s taillight trying to park. Sam didn’t have a problem with taking the blame. He just knew Dad would have been more pissed about Dean having let him drive than if he’d just thought Dean hadn’t been paying attention to driving. 

It had been a long time before Dean had let him drive the Impala again, but he knew Dean would need him to drive it now. 

Dean’s fingers struggled to wrap around the wheel. He settled for resting his palms against it as they wound out of the driveway. They drove past the barn with the farmhouse shrinking in the rearview mirror. 

The car slowed at the end of the driveway. Dean licked the blood from his lips. A smile spread over his face, crinkling the corners of his glistening eyes. It was serenity and peace and everything Sam had always wanted to see in his big brother. 

“Let’s take this Chevy to the levy,” Dean said.

He pulled the car out onto the long, empty stretch of road. It spread as far as they could see in either direction. Sam knew that was how Dean liked it. Sam wasn’t sure if it had ever been about the hunt for Dean or if it had been traveling with family in between. 

Dean relaxed back into the seat as the wind rushed over him, taking with it decades of struggle. The tension eased from his muscles as they flew over the open road.

Sam leaned over to take one side of the wheel when Dean’s hands began to slip. Dean’s tired eyes met his. Dean was still grinning as he leaned against the door for support. He held his hand out the window so his fingers could dance through the freedom of the wind currents. 

Dean bobbed his head to the music, tapping his free hand against the wheel. He didn’t have the coordination to hit the beats. He never had been the king of rhythm, but he’d always made up for it with enthusiasm. 

Dean nudged his elbow at him. “Sing it for me, Sammy.”

Sam laughed through his tears. “Is my singing really what you want to go out listening to?”

“Definitely.”

“All right, man, you asked for it.”

Sam jumped into the next verse, belting out an off-tune chorus only Dean could hear. Dean’s hand left the wheel completely to Sam as he lay back in the seat, just watching the road. 

When Dean lost the strength to hold down the gas, Sam took over that too, pressing the pedal to the floor. 

~~~

Dean’s fingers tightened around the worn leather, leather that his hands had grown up wrapped around. He remembered sitting on his father’s lap as they drove Sammy around the block to let Mom rest. He remembered the first time Dad had handed him the keys and when he had trusted him enough to take her out on his own.

He squinted his eyes against the brightness of the sun. Only a few clouds hung in the distance as they hauled ass beneath the open blue sky.

The windows were down, the wind whistling through their hair as they blasted down the open highway. It was just them and the road.

Dean hadn’t even realized how used he’d gotten to pain. Since the first day of training, it had been aching muscles and throbbing bruises. Later it had been the pain in his heart and the tiredness in his soul. 

Now he could breathe with the weight removed from his chest, secure in the knowledge that they’d given everything they had to the fight. He didn’t have to worry because he knew exactly where Sam would be tomorrow and he’d be safe.

Dean smiled as he looked at his brother, who was sitting comfortably in the seat beside him. There was peace in his eyes and an easy smile on his lips that had been absent for so long that Dean had barely remembered it. Now seeing it again, he didn’t know how he’d lived without it.

They’d just come from the Roadhouse and while he didn’t know where they were going, it didn’t matter. All he saw was the road ahead. All he felt was Sam’s smile.

There was no telling what would be around the next bend. Maybe they’d find Mom and Dad or maybe there’d just be more road to travel.


End file.
